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Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia and Beyond

An Inter-disciplinary Analysis

Alena Govorounova

“To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”Isaac Newton, Third Law of Motion,

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

“The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony, and all things take place by strife.”

Heraclitus of Ephesus, On Nature

Erich Neumann suggests in The Origins and History of Con-sciousness that human consciousness is subjected to the constant process of centroversion and differentiation (Neumann 1973, 261). This tendency of human thought—to constantly strive toward polarities and reorganize itself again as a holistic mode—seems to pertain to all layers of human cog-nitive architecture, from archetypal pre-reflective self-awareness to highly analytical interpretative supra-consciousness. It is reflected in the evolution of cultures and civilizations and it seems to be the driving force behind his-

* Alena Govorounova is a Research Associate at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. The quotations from the Bible are from the niv (New International Version, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984).

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torical changes in the intellectual climate and scientific paradigm shifts (see Kuhn 1962). As Friedrich Nietzsche (1999 [1888]; 1966 [1886]) once ironi-cally observed, we are doomed to think in opposites and controversies, we are trapped in categorical dualisms of “good and evil,” we are conditioned by contrast-based human language, where each unit of meaning is defined against what it is not. We are carried away in the endless play of différance1 in search for identity and meaning and we need the Other to define who we are. We conceptualize reality in binary oppositions2 of self/other, subject/object, center/margins; we are cognitively wired to centralize certain ele-ments of the system and marginalize others. Binary oppositions are categor-ically inseparable, for there is no self without other and no center without margins. However, as Nietzsche shrewdly warned us, dualisms are poten-tially reversible, essentially unsteady and easily alterable.3 Once we reaffirm the intrinsic value of the previously marginalized ideas, movements, and social groups, they start gravitating towards the center, undermine the sig-nificance of the previously centralized elements, and establish new power relations and regimes of truth;4 history repeats itself.

The perpetual process of centroversion and differentiation is traceable in the evolution of religions and spiritual traditions. Religious consciousness is subjected to the same cognitive mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, cen-tralizing and decentralizing. Religious doctrines and canons are constantly shrinking or expanding, overlapping and dissociating; religious “truths” are bouncing off one another in the quest for meaning and authentication. The

1. Différance is a term coined by Jacque Derrida to describe the way in which any sin-gle meaning of a concept or text arises only by the effacement of other possible meanings. Derrida coined the term différance (a deliberate misspelling of difference, a play on the two meanings of the French word différer: to differ and to defer) in order to demonstrate that a meaning does not arise out of fixed differences between static elements in a given con-ceptual system, but that the meanings produced in language and other signifying systems are always partial, provisional, and infinitely deferred along a chain of differing/deferring signifiers. See Derrida 1974 and 1980.

2. Binary oppositions signifies a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning (the term originated in the structuralist theory of Ferdinand de Saussure).

3. I refer to the Nietzschean On the Genealogy of Morals (2003 [1887]), where he attacks the Christian fixation on the opposition of “good and bad” and reinterprets it in terms of a “master-slave” dialectic, which is a reversible relational paradigm.

4. Regime of truth is a concept coined by Michel Foucault to describe how each society creates a regime of truth according to its beliefs, values, and mores. See Foucault 1980.

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pendulum swings between strict dogmatism and more liberal syncretism, radical sectarianism and reconciliatory ecumenism, harsh exclusionism and all-embracing universalism. The picture becomes even more complicated when we realize that the tendency to centroversion and differentiation is not simply two-sided: countless combinations of concepts and multiple layers of meaning are involved in the process.

Pentecostalism and shamanism make an interesting case study in this regard, with the two spiritual charismatic traditions— monotheistic and polytheistic— as mutually exclusive and yet categorically inseparable polari-ties, which include, exclude, centralize, marginalize and ultimately define one another. The academic struggle to define their mutual relationships is overcomplicated by the reality that academic thought is likewise prone to the never-ending process of centroversion and differentiation. This may partly account for why there is so much debate on the relations between Pentecostalism and shamanism in the sociology of religion: some claim that Pentecostalism and shamanism are the categorical opposites by point-ing to numerous doctrinal contradictions between the two traditions. After all, the official Christian doctrine strongly dissociates itself from the “hea-then” world and explicitly bans all kinds of occult spiritual practices out-side Christianity. Others claim that Pentecostal and shamanistic spirituality are ontologically identical in the base and that theological doctrines are but interpretative superstructures5; therefore, any doctrinal theological contra-dictions between Pentecostalism and shamanism are irrelevant to the social scientific discussion.

So, how do we define Pentecostalism against shamanism and vice versa? Is the contrastive-comparative approach legitimate at all? What would be the basis for the comparison? Is it doctrinal? Is it subjective-experiential? Is it an independent observant perspective? Should Christian theological doctrine be taken into account in this discussion? Should we recognize the first-person experiential accounts of Pentecostal believers and indigenous

5. Base and superstructure is Marxian terminology, where the base signifies the forces and relations of production in a society and the superstructure includes its culture, institu-tions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and state. The base determines (conditions) the superstructure, yet their relation is not strictly causal, because the superstructure often influences the base; the influence of the base, however, predominates (see Marx 2010 [1859]).


shamans as valid research data? Or maybe we should stay strictly confined to an exclusively third-person researcher perspective? In other words, is the “marriage” between Christian theology and the sociology of religion possible?

Pentecostalism and Shamanism: The Surface-level Academic Controversy

Why does the dichotomy of Pentecostalism versus shamanism gen-erate so much controversy among the sociologists of religion? How do these two religious traditions relate to each other? What is the common denomi-nator between monotheistic and polytheistic charismatic spiritualities?

To begin with, what is Pentecostalism? Pentecostalism is an umbrella term that includes a wide range of Christian denominations that place spe-cial emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through baptism in the Holy Spirit. It emphasizes practical manifestation of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” in the church today, such as divine healing, prophesy, “discern-ment of spirits” and other forms of supernatural revelation and paranormal cognition.

In my observation, Pentecostal congregations largely rely on the experi-ences of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” for the acquisition of Christian doctri-nal truths. Prophecies, “word of knowledge,” divine healings, and exorcism, among others, constitute a specific “prophetic subculture,” having its own theory and praxis, instructional literature, symbolism, and so forth. Perhaps the most commonly recognized revelatory phenomena are “the message of knowledge/wisdom” and “prophecy” that operate as instant and usually very particular supernatural knowledge of other individuals’ inner thoughts or private undisclosed information. There are many biblical and historical accounts of such supernatural ways of knowing, with the biblical story of the Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4: 4–26) being one of the most famous examples. Pentecostals claim that such revela-tory phenomena did not cease with time and are commonly observed today across Pentecostal and charismatic congregations.

What is shamanism? Shamanism is primarily defined as a polytheistic and poly-demonic religion based on the animistic worship of spirit beings. It emphasizes direct communication with the spirits, healing, prophesy (forecasting), and other forms of paranormal cognition and precognition.


Mircea Eliade (1972, 4) defines shamanism as “techniques of ecstasy” (or what is termed today as “altered states of consciousness”) and shamans as “specialists in the sacred” (Eliade and Trask 1972, 509). Shamans are psychic healers and spiritual mediums, who possess the ability to channel supernatural spirits though trance, meditation, prayer, chanting, dance, and other sacred rituals. Overall, traditional shamanic communities are known to be “spiritually tuned” toward various kinds of “non-conventional” psy-chic manifestations, miraculous healings, spirit-guidance, paranormal cog-nition, communal trance, and “shamanic hysteria.”6

So, what is the fundamental difference between Pentecostalism and sha-manism? May this dichotomy be conceptually overturned, deconstructed, and confined to a unitary frame? Should we agree with Mircea Eliade that “the dialectic of the sacred permits all reversibilities” (Eliade and Trask 1972, xviii)?

Opinions vary. Harvey Cox (1994, 213–41), Karin Horwatt (1988), Wal-ter Hollenweger (1997, 99–105), David Martin (2002, 160–2), Sung-Gun Kim (2006, 23–38) and many others argue that Pentecostalism has seen great success in Asia, Africa, and Latin America partly because Pentecostal Christians in the non-Western parts of the world have incorporated local shamanistic cultural elements and adapted indigenous religious symbols into Christian spirituality. They go so far as reinterpreting Pentecostalism as shamanized Christianity or Christian spiritism. Sylvie Shaw in “Pentecos-tal Shamanism?” explicitly calls Brian Houston, the head pastor of Hillsong Church (the biggest Pentecostal mega-church in Australia), “a modern-day shaman”; she maintains that he may be considered “the archetypal Pente-costal minister and much of the similarities [with shamanism] surrounding Pastor Houston can be used interchangeably with many Pentecostal min-isters also exhibiting shamanic qualities” (Shaw 2011, 20). Harvey Cox, a recognized authority on the academic study of Pentecostalism, formulates his observations as follows:

On a global basis, Pentecostals incorporate into their worship patterns the

6. Shamanic hysteria (arctic hysteria) is a term signifying unique mental disorders (bizarre tantrums and outburst) culturally-specific to the indigenous Arctic peoples (Eskimo, Chukchee). They are also often referred to as shamanic séances of soul travel and out-of-body experience. See Foulks 1985.


insights and practices of other faiths— shamanic trance, healing, ancestor veneration— more than any other Christian movement I know of, albeit, fre-quently without realizing it. Pentecostalism, I have come to believe, is “cath-olic” and universal in a way most Pentecostals do not recognize and many might even deny. (Cox 1993, 31)

“Might even deny” may be too weak; most Pentecostals today, I believe, will passionately disclaim the above presumed similarities between Pentecos-talism and shamanism by referring to their monotheistic convictions and their theology of “spiritual warfare” against the spiritual “forces of darkness,” which shamanism embodies in their eyes.

To add to the academic controversy, Rosalind I. J. Hackett in her work “Discourses of Demonization in Africa and Beyond” (2003) comes to the exact opposite conclusion to those by Harvey Cox, David Martin, and oth-ers. She argues that Pentecostalism succeeded in Africa and beyond due to the hostile discourses of demonization and scapegoating of shamanism and other indigenous folk religions by Pentecostal communities. Interestingly, Rosalind I. J. Hackett does not represent “the voice of Pentecostalism” in academia: on the contrary, she depicts Pentecostalism in Africa as a hostile (towards indigenous animism, occultism and witchcraft) social force that is responsible for “religious intolerance in many parts of post-colonial Africa, occasionally resulting in serious conflict and violence” (Hackett 2003, 69). Still, Hackett’s academic study reaffirms the denial by Pentecostals of pre-sumed similarities between Pentecostalism and shamanism:

The animosity of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians toward traditional religious practices in Africa assumed national significance. They posited that the war was caused by “people diluting the purity of the Christian gospel with ancestral beliefs which they take to be the work of Satan” (Ellis 1999, 270). They have opposed any attempt to revive traditional religion by those who attributed the war to the abandonment of tradition. The newer Chris-tian groups also view as demonic the popular local spiritual healers or “heal-ing churches” by referring to them as “Sixes,” recalling the mark of the Beast (666) in the Book of Revelation. (Hackett 2003, 273)

Rosalind I. J. Hackett’s research reaffirms Paul Gifford’s earlier argument expressed in his African Christianity: Its Public Role (1998, 324) that “the growth areas of Christianity are those that demonize African traditions and culture” [my emphasis]. It is a clash of civilizations (the scholars of Afri-


can Pentecostalism seem to be saying), it is a “holy war” that Pentecostalism wages against shamanism in search for its place in the multiverse of Afri-can religions: there is no observable syncretism, nor is there any observable incorporation of indigenous religious symbolism into Christian spirituality.

So, is Pentecostalism shamanism-friendly or shamanism-hostile? Should we agree with Harvey Cox, David Martin, and others that Pentecostalism is but shamanism in disguise, or should we agree with Paul Gifford and Rosa-lind I. J. Hackett that Pentecostalism and shamanism are religious and cul-tural counter-forces? Or both?

Pentecostalism and shamanism: the controversy gets magnified when we turn our gaze to South Korea. A particular bone of contention among the sociologists of religion remains the case with Korean Pentecostalism exem-plified by the Korean mega-church leader, Yonggi Cho, the founder and the senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, the biggest Christian congre-gation in South Korea. Yonggi Cho’s representation of Christian theology is criticized as being human-centered; it is likened to shamanism in that it “contains elements of magic and… belief that we have the power to cre-ate our own reality” (Reynalds 2000). Yonggi Cho is mostly criticized as a propagator of the so-called “doctrine of prosperity” (“health-and-wealth gospel,” “theology of prosperity,” etc.) with its overemphasis on the worldly ideals of prosperity, wealth, success, health, longevity, and other practical benefits that faith in God may grant. This overemphasis on the human-centered attributes in Korean Pentecostalism is interpreted by the critics of Yonggi Cho as “Christian shamanism.” Indigenous shamans attempt to manipulate spirits to obtain healing, success in worldly affairs, luck, pros-perity, and other material benefits; likewise the “Christian shamans” like Yonggi Cho and Brain Houston attempt to manipulate Christian God for their own purposes. Critics agree that “health-and wealth theology” “disre-gards a clear Scriptural teaching regarding Christian suffering and content-ment” (Reynalds 2000).

Yonggi Cho’s defenders contra-argue that the purpose of Cho’s ministry “is not to bring the Christian message to the animistic motif of blessing, but with social changes (after the liberation and much poverty)…. To properly understand Cho, it is important to consider the beginnings of the Chris-tian faith in Korea… under the harsh rule of the Japanese [being] extremely other-worldly with a strong martyrdom mentality, the other-worldly out-


look had to change and the Lord used Cho to bring this long-neglected part of God’s message to the Korean churches” (Wonsuk Ma in Reynalds 2000). Wonsuk Ma (2005), Allan Anderson (2004), and Hwa Yung (2004, 75–76) seriously question the presumption that there is a strong cultural connec-tion between Pentecostalism and shamanism in South Korea. Wonsuk Ma calls this presumption “biased and misinformed” (Reynalds 2000). Allan Anderson agrees, “Whether this is conscious syncretism or the influence of the ‘aura’ of shamanism and the joint acknowledgement of the world of spirits is debatable” (Anderson 2005, 5). Anderson insists that there is “enormous difference between interacting with shamanism (as Korean Pentecostals do) and becoming shamanistic” (Anderson 2004, 148). Lee Wanak suggests that in order to avoid the distortion of the beliefs of Korean Pentecostals, the sociologists of religion should utilize a more “open-ended approach, which would include the interviewing of Korean pastors and lay people in an attempt to discover their motives, values, dreams, and desires [and thus allow Korean people] to speak for themselves.”7 So, should we include first-person subjective accounts of personal faith by religious believ-ers (Pentecostals or shamans) into the social scientific analysis of the rela-tionship between shamanism and Pentecostalism? Should we let religious believers “speak for themselves”? If yes, then how? What is the best way to do so? Is it scientifically correct to include the believers’ doctrinal convic-tions or their subjective narratives of spiritual experience into the academic discourse? And if we welcome first-person religious experience into the halls of academia, would not we violate the academic standards of “disci-plinary rigor” and “good science”? Would not it undermine the integrity of academia itself? Finally, how can we avoid eliciting a potential doctrinal power-struggle between various religious groups, which all will be “pulling the blanket” to their side?

On the other hand, is it even possible to resolve the present academic con-troversy on the relations between two religions without taking into account first-person accounts of their actual belief systems?

7. Lee Wanak, a United States missionary working in the Philippines as Dean of the Asia Graduate School of Theology and Director of the Ed.D. program in an email to Reynalds; see Reynalds 2000.


Pentecostalism and Shamanism: The Underlying Theological Controversy

The concerns about the potential dangers of eliciting doctrinal biases and political agendas into the debate on Pentecostalism and shaman-ism are certainly valid. However, I believe that all kinds of doctrinal biases and political agendas have already crept into the contemporary academic controversy even though these underlying theological influences have never been openly recognized or sufficiently addressed.

What are these doctrinal biases and latent political agendas? I believe that the theological doctrines, which have largely influenced the academic polemic on Pentecostalism and shamanism, are those of Cessationism and Continuationism. Cessationism is the anti-Pentecostal doctrinal posi-tion within Christianity, which holds that the miraculous “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” such as tongues, prophesy, healing, and others ceased being prac-ticed early on in Church history and “are not for today.”8 Cessationists are mostly represented by Conservative Baptist, Reformed Churches, and other Christian denominations, which express strong doctrinal opposition to modern Pentecostalism. Contrary to Cessationism is Continuationism, a pro-Pentecostal doctrinal position that argues the miraculous “gifts of the Holy Spirit” “are for today”9: they have been available for use by the Church throughout its history ever since Pentecost and will cease co-terminously with the “second coming of Christ.”

Now, the Christian world is divided on the issue of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” and this theological split10 seems to reflect on the academic discus-sion on the relations between Pentecostalism and shamanism. What lies at

8. See Grudem 1996; Waldron 2007; Warfield 1972; MacArthur 1978; Gaffin 1979; and others

9. See Keener 2001; Tanza 2008; Ruthven 1993; and others. 10. The scholarly theological debate on the legitimacy of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”

today is far more complex than described here and includes various views of the in-between moderate Pentecostal and moderate Cessationist Evangelical groups. Despite the theolog-ical split on the issues of the Holy Spirit, the majority of Evangelical Christians express cautious yet tolerant views and attitudes towards one another and accept one another as “saved” (“born-again”) yet “deluded.” The views propagated by the adherents of moderate Cessationism and moderate Pentecostalism are not relevant to the present discussion and, therefore, are not introduced here.


the heart of the doctrinal polarity between Cessationism and Continuation-ism, and how does it resonate with the academic controversy on Pentecos-talism versus shamanism?

Cessationists propose that the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” were given only for the foundation of the Church during the period of ad 33–96. The founda-tion of the Church was laid on the day of Pentecost in 33 ad (Acts, chapter 2) and the Church came into full maturity by 96 ad, when the last book (Revelation) of the New Testament was written and the Holy Scriptures was complete. They propose that the gifts may have continued as long as until 200 ad (“Take the last living apostle [about 100 ad] who imparted gifts to the youngest possible person who lived to the oldest possible age”11) but then ceased completely. Where does the idea that the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” had ceased by the second century ad originate? Cessationists build their doc-trine on the basis of the following biblical passage:

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperrfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (I Corinthians 13: 8–12)

After the Apostle Paul gives an exhaustive explanation of the miraculous “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” their functions in the Church and their proper ecclesiastical exercise (I Corinthians, chapter 12), he goes on to philosophize that all supernatural spiritual gifts— no matter how powerful and impres-sive— are “nothing”12 unless their bearer also manifests the fruit of spiri-tual godly love (I Corinthians, chapter 13). Then, when “the perfect” comes, prophesies, tongues and supernatural revelations “will cease.” So, what is

11. See Cessation of Spiritual Gifts: Intro and Various Foundational Arguments; http://www.bible.ca/tongues-ceased-perfect-come-intro.htm.

12. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but have not love, I am only a resound-ing gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.” (I Corinthians 13: 1–3)


“the perfect” that is said to come? Cessationists argue that “the coming per-fection” refers not to the “second coming of Christ” but to the finality of inscripturated revelation, that is, the year 96. The Bible as it is now is an “all sufficient guide-book [that] contains all that we have to know about doc-trine and moral conduct,”13 and a good Christian must concern himself with leading a good sinless life, not with some kind of bizarre precarious “spiri-tual warfare.”

Pentecostals (Continuationists) strongly disagree. “Pentecostal apologet-ics” aimed at defying Cessationist theological critique claims instead that “the perfect” is a reference to the “second coming of Christ” when the full true knowledge of the world will be revealed through divine judgment. It may also refer to the event of a person’s physical death and his reunion with God in the spiritual realm. Delimited by the temporal-spacial parameters in the material realm we can only “see [the spiritual reality] in a mirror dimly” but once we are fully exposed to the spiritual realm we “shall know fully”; thus there is no need for prophesy or other supernatural forms of knowledge. And again (remind the Continuationists), after the Apostle Paul urges the believers to balance their spiritual gifts (“gifts of the Holy Spirit”) with spiritual fruit (godly love), he immediately reasserts again in the next verse: “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.” (I Corinthians 14: 1). Continuationists reason that the age of the “new covenant” of man with God (the age of the New Testament) is marked with the global-scale outpouring of the Holy Spirit, promised by Christ to the disciples before his ascendance to heaven14 and essential for the fulfillment of His “great commission” of the global evangelization. “Evict-ing demons is an integral part of the great commission,” maintains Conrad Murrel in his Practical Demonology (1995) and this “evicting of demons,” he insists, concerns both non-Christians and Christians alike. While only non-Christians may be “demon-possessed” (internally) in some serious cases, both non-Christians and “born-again” Christians can potentially be “demon-oppressed” (externally), which explains why so many Christian believers live

13. Cessation of Spiritual Gifts: Intro and Various Foundational Arguments; op. cit.14. “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: ‘Do

not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’” (Acts 1: 4–5).


far from “victorious” and “godly” Christian lives.15 Unfortunately, Murrell explains, “a shallow, cheap gospel with little of the holiness of God revealed” produces “shallow” repentance in many Christians and “where the light is dim, much darkness lies undisturbed.” Thus, the “deliverance ministry” in the church becomes a “patch-up job on defective soteriology” (Murrel 1995, 173). Therefore, combating with sin in one’s life is obviously a noble task but it may simply be not enough, Murrell concludes, since “the flesh can be yielded up to the Cross for crucifixion, but demons must be rejected and driven away by the Name of Jesus and the authority of the Blood. You cannot cast out the flesh or crucify demons” (Murrel 1995, 99).

Prophetic ministries are also essentially important for the church today, argues a famous Pentecostal prophetic minister, Rick Joyner:

Why do we need prophets today? Do we not have the Scriptures, which con-tain the whole council of God? Yes, the Bible is complete, sufficient, inerrant, written Word of God, and it is the only foundation upon which we base the Christian doctrine. But it was never intended to be the whole council of God. If it were, we would not need the Holy Spirit or any of the ministries that He has given to His church. (Joyner 1997, 47)

Thus, according to Continuationists, the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” were meant for the whole interadvental period and will cease only with the “return of Christ.” Why do Cessationists refuse to accept these empower-ing spiritual gifts from God? It is because of the natural human fear of the supernatural, argue Continuationalists. In fact, it is Satan, who sows the seeds of doubt and fear into the minds of anti-Pentecostals to keep them in bondage and deprive them of a divine blessing of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit.” In the words of Rick Joyner, “Many, out of a fear of deception, have shied away from all prophetic or other spiritual gifts. But if we allow the fear of deception to control us, we have already been deceived, and the enemy has accomplished his purpose” (Joyner 1997, 26).

All the while radical Cessationists spread the message that the attempts to revive the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” are demon-inspired and insist that the modern Pentecostalism is a revival of the ancient Montanist movement,

15. “The basic idea of deliverance is that a Christian’s progress and advance can be blocked by demons who maintain some power over the Christian, despite his or her com-ing to Christ” (Gifford 2001, 65)


which was refuted by the Church as a heresy in the second century ad.16 A strong anti-Pentecostal rhetoric maintains, “ultimately, Satan is the God of modern Pentecostalism”17 and, modern Pentecostals, thus, are:

the lawless one [which] will be in accordance with the work of Satan dis-played in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be con-demned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

(II Thessalonians, 2: 9–10)18

Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?”

(Matthew 7: 22–23)

These biblical words comprise the ancient warning against modern Pen-tecostalism, which is but occultism (shamanism) in disguise, Cessation-ists claim.19 Pentecostals contra-argue that the above biblical passages in II Thessalonians and the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, do not refer to mod-ern Pentecostalism but designate pagan or neo-pagan occult teachings and practices, which creep into the Church in a form of “false prophesies,” “false tongues” and “false signs and wonders.” In the words of Rick Joyner:

The Lord Himself warned us that every time he sows wheat, the enemy will try to sow tares in the same field. He also warned that in the last days “many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many” (Matthew 24: 11). This warn-ing that there will be “many false prophets” implies that there are also true ones. Otherwise, Jesus would have just said that all prophets in the last days will be false.… To claim that we no longer need prophets is to claim that we

16. Montanism was an early Christian sectarian movement beginning in the mid-second century ad, named after its founder Montanus. It flourished in and around the region of Phrygia in contemporary Turkey, and also spread to other regions in the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries. Its defining characteristics were a belief in continuing rev-elation, a refusal to compromise with worldly standards, its anti-hierarchical stance against appointed bishops leading the Church, and the practice of ecstatic worship in which its prophets channeled messages from God

17. Cessation of Spiritual Gifts, op. cit.18. see Cessation of Spiritual Gifts, op. cit.19. According to Cessation of Spiritual Gifts, op. cit.


are already perfect, which even the most casual observer would recognize as a major delusion. Even so, we know that there are false prophets and a lot of them! This includes false prophets who are in the church and those who are not. The false prophets who are not in the church, such as cult lead-ers and those who are vehemently anti-Christ, are obvious…. The ones who are in the church… I do not like to call “false prophets” but rather “pseudo prophets.” They can truly be good Christians but have simply presumed to have a ministry that the Lord did not give to them.… We do need to recog-nize though that the enemy has a counterfeit for each of the true prophetic gifts and that they do have some power. The spiritual power being released by the New Age movement and other cult practices is real, but it is the supernatural power of the evil one. (Joyner 1997, 25–26) [my emphasis]

Thus, Pentecostals transfer the blame of “false signs and wonders” entirely on pagan and neo-pagan spirituality, embodied in the New Age move-ment, cults, and the occult. Neil Anderson, a leading Pentecostal author-ity on “spiritual deliverance,” in his Resolving Spiritual Conflict (1992, 32–33) presents a “non-exhaustive” (allegedly) list of “satanically-inspired occult practices or false religions… and counterfeit religious experiences,” which “born-again” Christians seeking freedom from “spiritual bondage” in their lives should renounce in order to experience full spiritual freedom, “vic-tory” and joy in their Christian walk. They include:

1. Occult: astral-projection, ouija board, table lifting, speaking in trance, auto-matic writing, magic eight ball, telepathy, ghosts, materialization, clairvoy-ance, spirit guides, fortune telling, tarot cards, palm reading, astrology, rod and pendulum (dowsing), hypnosis, séance, black and white magic, men-tal suggestions (attempts to swap minds), fetishism, incubi and succubae, blood pacts (or cut yourself in a destructive way), other.

2. Cults: Christian science, Unity, Scientology, Witness Lee, The Way Inter-national, Unification Church, Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, Children of God, Swedenborgianism, Herbert W. Armstrong, Unitarianism, Masons, New Age, Science of Creative Intelligence, Transcendental Meditation, Yoga, Echkanhar, Roy Masters, Silva Mind Control, ESP, Father Divine, Theosophical Society, other.

Conrad Murrell repeats this list and adds to it: idolatrous practices and superstitions of ancestors, all idolatry, charms, amulets and fetishes, signs of the zodiac, all sorts of mystic healings and communication with spirits through mediums, common folk practices as water witching, wart removal,


stopping nose bleeds, etc. through certain mystical procedures, so-called psychic activities: psychoneurosis, psychic healing, all forms of projection of “spirits” or thoughts, drugs (Murrell 1995, 85–94). The same views are advocated by Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, Derek Prince, a Pentecostal fic-tion-writer Frank E. Peretti and other recognized Pentecostal authorities on “spiritual warfare.”

As evident from the above, “shamanism” is not explicitly on the list of “satanically-inspired counterfeit” (presumably because traditional indig-enous shamanisms are rarely encountered today). However, all shamanistic practices such as “speaking in trance,” “spirit guides,” “idolatrous practices and superstitions of ancestors,” “all idolatry, charms, amulets and fetishes,” “all sorts of mystic healings and communication with spirits through medi-ums,” “common folk practices” and “drugs” are. These practices have been revived and reinforced through the New Age movement, new religions and cults, and they are perceived as “demon-inspired” by mainstream Pentecos-tals, especially those preoccupied with the “spiritual warfare.” Since shaman-ism in a modern society is most vocal in the form of neo-shamanisms and “all neo-shamanisms are marked out by features more or less bound to New Age postmodernism” (Hamayon 2000, 8), the Christian “spiritual warfare” today is primarily concerned with defying the occult religious experiences promoted by the New Age movement and cults.

It is very important to make it clear at the outset that the discourse of devilization of shamanism (occultism) is not and has never been the inven-tion of the Pentecostal subculture. Regardless of denomination, all kinds of Christian groups and congregations today (and historically) perceive occult spiritual practices as either doctrinally incompatible with the Christian worldview (on the positive end of the spectrum) or plain demonic (on the negative end).

Historically, Western Christianity doctrinally dissociated itself from the trance-like spiritual practices manifest within pagan traditions. “Trance, which comes from the Latin transire ‘to die, to pass from one state to another,’ was used to condemn pagan practices in the Middle Ages in West-ern Europe” (Hamayon 2000, 2), argues Roberte Hamayon in “Ecstasy” and the Self or the West-dreamt Shamanism: From Socrates to New Age Postmod-ernism (2000). Eastern Christianity, likewise, condemned non-Christian spiritual practices, Hamayon explains, “Due to Russian Orthodox mis-


sionaries, the shaman’s figure observed in Siberia was held to be religious, although aimed at serving the devil instead of God.… The intended purpose of this devilization of shamanism was favouring the spread of Christianity” (Hamayon 2000, 7).

So what does the devilization of the New Age movement and neo-sha-manisms mean for the promotion of Christianity today? A chapter on “A Christian Response to the New Age” by John A. Saliba in The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions (2004) discusses three Christian responses to the New Age Movement (nam): Christian fundamentalist, mainline Prot-estant, and Catholic. According to Saliba, Christian Protestant responses to New Age spirituality vary from “virulent denunciations…, hysterical tirades against all New Age ideas (fundamentalist)” to looking for “areas where Christians can learn from, and cooperate with, those involved in the New Age (mainline Protestant)” (Saliba 2004, 308–10). Saliba demonstrates that “most fundamentalist writings on the nam spur Christians to counteract its activities belligerently” (Saliba 2004, 308–9), and even though some fun-damentalist writers, like Douglas Grootius “de-emphasizes the theory that it is a satanic plot to overthrow Christianity… by remarking that the nam does offer hope in a hopeless world,” most fundamentalists like Constance Cumbey and David Hunt portray the nam as “demonic conspiracy aimed at destroying Christianity” (Saliba 2004, 308). As for the mainline Protestant reaction, “like the fundamentalist perspective it has drawn attention to the gnostic elements of the movement and stressed their incompatibility with traditional Christian doctrine (Richard Thompson, Ted Peters)” (Saliba 2004, 310).

Still, some mainline Protestant theologians admit that the nam is “a revival of the Western esoteric tradition which has sometimes existed in creative tension with orthodox Christianity (Philip Almond)” and “avoid hysterical outcries and fearful condemnations (Ted Peters).” Finally, Saliba comments that “the Catholic answer to the New Age has been varied and contradic-tory” (Saliba 2004, 310). Some Catholic critics claim that “The New Age is based on deception. This is certainly allied to the satanic (Ralph Rath),” while others point out to the fact that “the quest for meaning and healing, which are central to New Age consciousness being rooted in both Eastern and Western contemplative and mystical traditions [creates] a continuity between Christian thought and… New Age” (David Toolan)” (Saliba 2004,


312). Nevertheless, even the most New-Age-friendly Catholic writers criti-cize the nam “for its idealism, self-centeredness” (David Toolan) and “for its egocentric worldview and its syncretism (Cardinal Godfried Danneels)” (Saliba 2004, 310). Overall, according to Saliba, Catholics “envisage the New Age largely as a threat to orthodoxy and orthopraxis” (Saliba 2004, 310).

In a word, in his analysis of the variety of Christian responses towards New Age spirituality today, Saliba admits that even those Christian critics who manage to find a positive connection between Christianity and the New Age movement, do so in an attempt to reinterpret New Age as a Christian ally in the united battle against the modern-day secularization and de-spir-itualization of existence. “The New Age’s reaction to scientific rationalism, its integration of matter and spirit, and its stress on mystical experiences are solidly based in the Christian tradition,” maintains Saliba, and yet, “many of the elements of the New Age movement are altogether incompatible with Christianity (Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy of Miami)” (Saliba 2004, 313).

To summarize, discourses of demonization of shamanism (pagan and neo-pagan spirituality) vary across Christian denominations and range from defining it as “doctrinally incompatible with Christianity” at best to “satanically-inspired” at worst. Christian fundamentalists appear to be the most uncompromising and non-politically-correct in expressing their views on pagan spirituality and, curiously enough, these same Christian funda-mentalists comprise the majority of the Cessationist critics of Pentecostal-ism. To them, all psychic spiritual phenomena both inside and outside the church are “demon-inspired” and the case cannot be re-appealed. Pentecos-tals agree that “satanically-inspired counterfeits” of spiritual gifts certainly exist inside the church (“false prophesies,” “false signs and wonders”) as well as outside (New Age, cults, the occult) but they disagree with the Cessa-tionist position that holds all psychic spiritual manifestations as “demonic.” Pentecostals do not waver in their confidence that authentically Christian, God-inspired “gifts of the Holy Spirit” are real and are for today; they pow-erfully reveal God’s glory.

So, what picture is coming into focus here? Pentecostals demonize sha-manism, anti-Pentecostals demonize shamanism and Pentecostalism, Pen-tecostals strive to refute the attacks of the anti-Pentecostals while reminding


anti-Pentecostals that their fear of the supernatural hinders them from “releasing the power of the Holy Spirit” and “advancing God’s kingdom on earth.” Both parties are convinced that the other one had fallen prey to a “satanic plot” and both are eager to “save” and lead one another “into all truth.” Religious “truths” bounce against one another in the endless play of différance where—ironically enough—Satan serves as the transcendental signified20 and the ultimate point of reference.

The present essay, obviously, does not do full justice to the depth and width of the doctrinal-historical debate between Cessationists and Continu-ationists, nor does it draw an exhaustive picture of the complexity of the relationship between Pentecostal and anti-Pentecostal Christian groups and denominations. While my focus has been on the doctrinal polarity between the two camps, I must point out that the majority of Pentecostal and anti-Pentecostal Christians exhibit inclusive and tolerant attitudes towards one another despite the apparent theological contradictions on the so-called “secondary doctrinal issues.”21 In fact, a vast majority of Christians in the world today would probably fall into the doctrinally-neutral non-Pentecos-tal category, which does not concern itself with the peculiarities of the above theological polemic.

Without going into the deep complexity of the Cessationist-Continuationist doctrinal debate, let us return to the original question: How does the Chris-tian theological split on the matters of the Holy Spirit reflect on the academic discussion on the relationship between Pentecostalism and shamanism?

20. A transcendental signified is term coined by Jacques Derrida to designate a signified that transcends all signifiers, and it is a meaning that transcends all signs (as in Saussurean semiotics). Derrida assumes that the entire history of Western metaphysics from Plato to the present is founded on a classic, fundamental error. This error is searching for a tran-scendental signified, an “external point of reference” (like God, religion, reason, science, et al.) upon which one may build a concept or philosophy. This transcendental signified is centered in the process of interpretation and whatever else is decentered. To Derrida this is a great error because: 1. there is no ultimate truth or a unifying element in universe, and thus no ultimate reality (including whatever transcendental signified); what is left is only difference; 2. any text, in the light of this fact, has almost an infinite number of possible interpretations, and there is no assumed one signified meaning. See Derrida 1974, 49.

21. In Christian parlance, “secondary doctrines” are those that are important, but are not essential to salvation.


“Seeing in a Mirror Dimly”: Challenging the Academic “Objectivity” Myth

The above-described Cessationist-Continuationist split is not lim-ited to doctrinal disagreements: on the level of ritual praxis mutual criti-cisms abide as well. Anti-Pentecostals accuse Pentecostals of profaning the gospel by means of “happy-clappy” worship style, excessive emotionalism and sensationalism. Pentecostals, in turn, accuse their more conservative brothers and sisters of robbing their adherents of “personal experience of God” and the “liberating power of the Holy Spirit.” They criticize Christian fundamentalists for being too dry and scholastic and for depriving their church members of true joy and fullness of life. Eventually, these Pentecos-tal and anti-Pentecostal intra-denominational understandings of “proper” expressions of Christian religiosity permeate into secular culture, create a popular image of “appropriate” Christian worship style, and shape the aca-demic discourse on Pentecostalism in the sociology of religion.

“Take what is called “Hallelujah-robics,” suggests Jeremy Reynalds in Is Cho a Pentecostal Shaman? (2000). He quotes from Harvey Cox’s Fire from Heaven (1995, 223): “The dancing is led by enthusiastic teams.…Then more singing begins... and the people move faster and faster until, no longer able to keep it up, they stop in happy exhaustion. To a visitor schooled in shamanism, the worship at the Yoido Full Gospel Church bears a striking resemblance to what is ordinarily known as ‘shamanism’.” (quoted in Rey-nalds 2000).

But, Pentecostals object, the first Hallelujah-robics is found in II Samuel in the Old Testament! A charismatic leader of Israel, King David, danced and leaped half naked before the Lord “with all his might” and King Saul’s daughter, who despised him as a “vulgar man” was actually punished by God! (2 Samuel, 6: 16-23). Does this mean that King David exhibited sha-manic qualities? How about the Old Testament’s Jewish prophets who cer-tainly were not the most culturally conventional figures of their times? Was John the Baptist a highly reverential legalistic character, who cared about how his appearance and actions would look on the surface to his audience? And eventually, we find that the most outwardly reverential, “godly,” law-abiding and culturally fit characters of their time were the Pharisees who crucified Jesus. Again, the “accusation pendulum” swings back.


So, what is “proper” Christian worship? Is it Catholic, Orthodox, Chris-tian Fundamentalist, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Anglican, Pentecostal? What did the first-century early Christian worship service look like? How do we know that the first-century Christians did not dance “in the Spirit” to the point of “happy exhaustion” in line with the ancient Jewish tradition of ritual celebratory dance? Is it possible to conceive that today we are look-ing at the Pentecostal worship style through the prism of the conservative Christian tradition?

That is to say, what preconceived ideas of the “properness” of Christian religious expressions do sociologists of religion have in mind when they approach Pentecostal worship services and prayer meetings? Is their bias Pentecostal, anti-Pentecostal, or non-Pentecostal and how does it reflect on their perception and interpretation of Pentecostalism? Would it be more intellectually honest and academically rigorous to recognize our doctrinal biases and make them explicit from the outset (including my own: moderate Pentecostal)?

In other words, instead of asking if the marriage between theology and the sociology of religion is possible, we should awake and see that this mar-riage has already been enunciated without us realizing it? When sociologists of religion analyze the relationship between religion and the economic or social structure of society, when they focus on religious population demo-graphics, birth rates, migration patterns and other social or economic fac-tors, they may well succeed at applying methodological atheism22 to their research. But when sociologists of religion begin to make interpretative claims on religious ideas and beliefs of others, as it happens in the case with the attempts to assimilate Pentecostalism with shamanism, they certainly cross the disciplinary boundaries into the fields of theology, philosophy, ethics and other disciplines.

Not surprisingly, Pentecostal Christians sense that the anti-Pentecostal theological biases inadvertently influence the academic discourse on Pen-tecostalism and react correspondingly. One of the readers of Harvey Cox’s Fire from Heaven (1995) wrote in a review in the amazon.com customer review section:

22. Methodological atheism designates the method of comparing multiple conflicting religious beliefs and dogmas without assessing the validity of religious beliefs. See Berger 1990 (1967).


Cox’s Fire From Heaven does bring some sense of legitimacy to Pentecostal-ism among the liberal academy of theologians and religionists.… However, in playing up the idea that Pentecostalism may be little more than a Christian “mask” over indigenous spiritualities, I think he may have played into the hands of religious right fundamentalists who attack a charismatic Christian-ity as heretical and into the hands of intellectual universalists who don’t wish to see a distinct contribution from the Christian Pentecostal movement as a unique form of religious spirituality.23

Now, Pentecostals express concerns that Cessationist doctrines may have fogged the academic interpretation of Pentecostalism in the sociology of religion and demand a retrial. However, should not they first “cast out the plank from their own eye”? How about pro-Pentecostal voices in academia? Are they any more objective or unbiased in the way they frame their aca-demic counter-arguments? Did not Lee Wanak suggest that in order to avoid a distortion of Pentecostal beliefs we need “to discover their motives values, dreams and desires”? Did he not insist that Pentecostals should be allowed to “speak for themselves” and express their subjective interpretation of who they really are? And unless Pentecostals eventually “speak for them-selves,” does Pentecostalism stand any chance of disclaiming the academic presumption that it is “little more than a Christian “mask” over indigenous spiritualities”? This is highly doubtful. In my view, “Pentecostal apologetics” is crippled without the crutches of theological justification and first-person experiential evidence, and pro-Pentecostal rhetoric is even more doctrinally and experientially bound than the anti-Pentecostal critique. Still, the differ-ence between Cessationist and Continuationist biases in academia is that while Continuationist (Pentecostal) doctrinal biases are explicit, the Ces-sationist (anti-Pentecostal) biases are implicit and remain largely unrecog-nized and unchallenged.

Let us look at one more example of a doctrinal bias, which may be drawn from “A Study of Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare from a Chinese Perspec-tive” by Samuel Hio-Kee Ooi (2006). In his paper, Ooi maintains that “It is a fact that in the Chinese context, shamanism never ceases to exist” (Ooi 2006, 150), and suggests that Pentecostal “strategic level spiritual warfare” (slsw) may be likened to traditional shamanic exorcism. What is this “stra-

23. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Fire-From-Heaven-Pentecostal-Spirituality/dp/0306810492.


tegic level spiritual warfare”? Ooi explains by referring to Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs and other promoters of slsw:

slsw is a popular charismatic method of casting out demons from geo-graphical locations and territories. The demonic control of the spirits over the geographical area can even be identified on three levels, namely: first, on the “ground-level” demons, which possess people, second, “occult-level” demons, which empower witches, shamans and magicians; and the final, “strategic level” demons, which are the most powerful of the three. The last ones are said to rule over certain large regions and territories.

(Ooi 2006, 146–48)

Apparently, the slsw doctrine relies on “a Christian semantic [of] angels and demons believed to be composed of different ranks” (Ooi 2006, 156). Samuel Hio-Kee Ooi finds similarities between the Christian understanding of the world of spirits as being hierarchically ranked24 and the hierarchi-cal ranking of deities in the Chinese pantheon of Taoist gods. He provides a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese pantheistic cosmology and the Chinese shamanic exorcism methods and states that his “hope is to shed light on the idea of “exorcism” or “demon casting” in slsw by looking at the practice of demon-casting in Chinese popular religion” (Ooi 2006, 153). He provides a step-by-step description of the methods in Chinese traditional shamanic exorcism, namely: 1. cast the demon and fry it in the hot pan; 2. seeking a successor; 3. making a substitute; 4. sacrifice to the offended gods.25 Ooi compares the “step-by-step” Chinese shamanic exorcism method to the “clear steps as ritual to cast out or expel demons” (Ooi 2006, 157) elabo-rated by the Pentecostal slsw promoters. These are: 1. seek the name of a ruling spirit and identify its territory; 2. seek the function of demons in a particular area; 3. “praise march,” “prayer walk,” “prayer expedition,” or “prayer journey” to expel demons from the appointed geographical areas. “Identification repentance” is also required… in order to discover the sin and guilt that allow the demon to build footholds in the area. Repenting for that sin is necessary to break the grip of demons in an area.”26 Based on the

24. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6: 12).

25. Ooi refers to Dong 1984, 255–56. 26. Ooi 2006, 148. Thus, the most distinguishing feature of Christian exorcism in con-


comprehensive analysis of the similarities and differences between the Chi-nese shamanistic and the Christian Pentecostal demon-casting strategies, Ooi comes to the conclusion that the Pentecostal fascination with “strategic level spiritual warfare” is “the result of exposure to the Eastern mysticism of transcendental meditation and others, leading the Western society and some Christian churches into the Eastern spiritual worldview that embraces a concept of hierarchical ranking of spiritual beings, which is nothing new to Chinese people” (Ooi 2006, 157).

I hesitate to label Ooi’s position as that of a Cessationist, however, it is clear that his views reflect the Cessationist understanding that “a good Christian must concern himself with leading a good sinless life—not with some kind of bizarre precarious “spiritual warfare,” as follows:

Is it possible that the spirits that possess different individuals are truly the spirit of rage, spirit of promiscuous, spirit of lust and so forth? Theologically, it is sound to state that spirit possessions are usually related to sin.… The Apostle Paul elaborates sin in personified terms.… The body belongs to the sin.… Paul says that the body can only be redeemed when the power of sin is cancelled. The only way to cancel that is through the death of Christ on the cross.… It is interesting to note that in the Epistle to the Romans, Paul does not attribute the bondage of human beings to Satan, or to “the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm,” as illus-trated in Ephesians 6, but to sin (Ooi 2006, 159–60). For many generations, exposure and contact with the spiritual realm was deemed a prohibited act by most Chinese evangelical believers, who believed that the gods, the spirits of the dead, the spirits of the ancestors, are all evil spirits in disguise; and having turned to Christ, converted Christians have entered the realm of God, from darkness into light. Thus, once liberated from the grasp of the old gods, and having denounced the physical and visible idols, the power of darkness and Satan could no longer take hold onto their lives. Christians do not need to re-enter into the spiritual realm to bind the “evil spirits” whom they once venerated and certainly not to say they must look for the overlords of these spirits for a battle at a higher level. Christ has already won the victory once and for all. (Ooi 2006, 160).

trast to that of shamanic is that there is a consensus among Pentecostals that “repentance of sins” is the most crucial step in a “spiritual warfare” without which demon-casting is impossible.


Why is the slsw teaching dangerous, according to Ooi? It is because it “would be more than welcome to Chinese people, for that would affirm their belief system as well. They would perceive it as a “Christian version” of a pantheistic view of the different levels of gods. Moreover, the same view would certainly fit with the Hindu pantheistic view which sees all gods as manifestations of the Brahma, whereas one is at a higher or a lower level.… But what then is so unique in Christianity?” (Ooi 2006, 161). Ooi notes that A. Scott Moreau’s analysis of the similarity of slsw and Hinduism in his “Gaining Perspective on Territorial Spirit”27 shares his viewpoint.

My purpose here is far from trying to advocate the practice of “geographi-cal exorcism” of “territorial spirits” elaborated by Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, and other slsw promoters. The problem that I find with Ooi’s line of argumentation is that his personal theological position implicitly over-shadows his analysis of the nexus between shamanism and Pentecostal-ism and predominates over his comparative religion framework. However, Ooi’s work raises a number of important questions, among which the most troubling one is the question of syncretism of Christianity with indigenous cosmologies and the role that Pentecostalism might have played in its expansion in Asia. Ooi is not alone in asking this question. Other scholars of Asian Pentecostalism also point out to the syncretic tendencies in Asian Christianity that stem from the similarities between the Christian spiri-tual worldview which holds angels and demons to be composed of differ-ent ranks, and polytheistic cosmologies of indigenous religions that venture hierarchical pantheons of deities and demons. To give another example, Sung-Gun Kim in Pentecostalism, Shamanism and Capitalism within Con-temporary Korean Society notes:

Within Korean’s Shamanistic pantheon there developed a concept of a hier-archy of the gods. Above all the spirits stood one supreme ruler named Hananim…. American Christian missionaries recognized Hananim as a distinctive Korean deity [but] it was easy to accept Hananim as a counter-part of the Christian God… Thus being part of its essential Korean religious heritage, the monotheistic concept of God originally developed from Korea’s Shamanistic pantheon.… The Shamanic “personalized” view of God as the

27. Samuel Hio-Kee Ooi gives a reference to Moreau, Scott, A. “Gaining Perspective on Territorial Spirits”; http://www.lausanne.org/Brix?pageID=13884), 18 August 2005.


supreme God presiding over the affairs of heaven and earth was fundamen-tally important in the rapid progress of Christian Evangelicalism. This was especially true in its Pentecostal guise which stressed spiritualism and spirit-ism.… (Kim 2006, 27–28)

According to Kim, the metonymic transition of the notion of “a supreme deity” from the indigenous pantheistic term Hananim onto the Hananim designating “Christian God” resulted in syncretic tendencies and encour-aged the overall shamanization of Christianity in Korea.

Now, this proposition invokes a number of counter-arguments: Are Christian adherents in Korea doctrinally illiterate and incapable of distin-guishing the original Hananim—the celestial god of Korean shamanistic pantheon—from the Christian Hananim? Are they unaware of semantic relations within language and are they incapable of inferring meaning from context? By the same token, do Japanese Christians confuse a polytheistic term kami designating “gods” (“spirits”) and a monotheistic term kami des-ignating “Christian God”?28 How do Christians today read Leviticus 19: 4: “Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the Lord your God” and know the difference between “gods” with a small “g” and “God” with a capital “G”? Finally, are Chinese Pentecostal Christians across Asia unable (as Samuel Hio-Kee Ooi suggests) to doctrinally dis-criminate between the Chinese pantheon of Taoist deities and the Christian biblical worldview, which holds pagan deities as “demons”?

As many sociologists of religion quoted above argue, the expansion of Christianity highly depends on the discourses of devilization of pagan dei-ties and their spiritual mediums. How is it possible that Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Christians missed out on this belligerent Pentecostal anti-sha-manistic rhetoric?

On the other hand, is it possible to conceive that by engaging in a “spiri-tual warfare” against the occult “powers of darkness,” Pentecostalism (para-doxically) highlights and reaffirms indigenous shamanism, spiritism, and occultism, as the critics of Pentecostalism suggest? What are we dealing with here? Does Pentecostalism encourage syncretism and “doctrinal con-

28. The problem of the translation of the Christian theological concepts (God, Holy Spirit, spirits, others) and their appropriation in the Japanese sociolinguistic code was discussed in detail in my article on “Orthodox Bible translation into Japanese in Meiji Japan” (2004).


tamination” of Christianity in Asia and beyond? Or does it encourage the quest for “doctrinal purity” and spiritual holiness?

These are the burning questions. Why are some Christians more prone to syncretism while others are crucially concerned with the “purity of the doctrine”? And who is there to decide where this notorious “purity” of the doctrine lies? Religious worldviews permanently evolve: religious doctrines and canons are constantly shrinking and expanding, overlapping and dis-sociating, bouncing off one another in the never-ending process of centro-version and differentiation. The pendulum swings between dogmatism and syncretism, sectarianism and ecumenism, exclusionism and universalism. Mircea Eliade reminds us, “Not only can a community—consciously or unconsciously —practice many religions but the same individual can have an infinite variety of religious experiences, from the ‘highest’ to the most undeveloped and aberrant” (Eliade and Trask 1972, xviii). Indeed, the reli-gious identity of a given individual is not a fixed entity – it is constantly developing throughout one’s life. Then, what individuals, what social groups and communities should be considered the representative research target for the sociology of religion studying Pentecostalism in Asia? Who should be considered a representative model of Asian Christianity— a radical Pen-tecostal promoter of “strategic level spiritual warfare” who sees a demon “behind every bush”? Or a liberal syncretist who puts a statue of Jesus next to the statues of other gods on his Hindu (Tao, Shinto, Confucian, Buddhist) home altar and consults with a local fortune-teller about investments?

Finally, who should be the voice of shamanism in the academia? In the neverending quest for meaning and authentication, shamanism has been conceptually marginalized and re-centralized, devilized and idolized, ostra-cized and exoticized. In the Christian context it suffers devilization. In the modernist colonialist context shamanism is reduced to the psychiatric med-icalization discourse, where shamanic behavior is qualified “as psycho-path-ological” and shamanic practice as “therapeutical” (Hamayon 2000, 7–9). The post-colonial discourse tries to restore shamanism and shamans to their “human dignity” and “human rights” and to de-marginalize indigenous spiritualities under the banner of eco-centrism. Western neo-shamanisms and the New Age movement create explicit discourses of idealization and exoticization of traditional shamanisms. So, who is the voice of shamanism in the academia? What does it mean to be authentically shamanic?


To summarize, who represents whom in the sociology of religion? The first-person subjective perspectives are multiple and contradictory and the third-person independent observant perspective is obscured. What is a “disciplinary rigor” in regard to the sociology of religion, where are the dis-ciplinary boundaries? If we identify Australian mega-church pastor Brain Houston as “archetypal modern-day shaman” and South Korean mega-church leader Yonggi Cho as a “Christian shaman,” then let us “cut straight to the chase” and—using the same line of reasoning—ask ourselves: How about Jesus Christ? Does he not satisfy the classical definition of a charis-matic shaman-master, a Spirit-medium, a psychic healer and community leader, a mystic “specialist in the sacred”? Perhaps, these questions are valid as long as we conceptualize them ahistorically, on the level of philosophical abstractions. But is it possible to make such sweeping comparisons socio-logically and anthropologically? Is it possible to take these charismatic leaders out of context? Is it possible to strip them off their socio-cultural bearings and doctrinal paradigms? Would not this violate the disciplinary rigor of the sociology of religion? Would not this violate the dignity of the research subjects themselves?

Now, there is one comparative framework applied for the analysis of the relations between Pentecostalism and shamanism that seems to stand the challenge. Many sociologists of religion in Asia utilize the social scientific category of “pragmatism” to compare the two traditions by pointing out to their shared qualities of “human-centeredness” and “this-worldly orienta-tion.” What would be a Pentecostal response to this approach?

“Human-All-Too-Human”: Is the “Theology of Prosperity” Rooted in Shamanism?

Did shamanism pave the way for the easy acceptance of Pentecos-talism in South Korea, Latin America, Africa and other non-Western parts of the world where shamanistic practices are still vibrant today? Certainly, it is possible to speculate that modern societies, which are marked by the strong presence of shamanism, animism, occultism, and witchcraft are gen-erally more open to the acceptance of Pentecostal spiritual practices, such as trance, visions, prophesies, and speaking in tongues. Shamanism makes Pentecostalism look less strange, deviant, or exotic and prepares modern


rational minds for smoother cultural adaptation of extravagant Pentecostal expressions of Christian spirituality. In the words of William W. Menzies:

In much of Asia, there is a surprising cross-current of belief that somehow meshes concern for the immediate and the practical with the notion that there is, indeed, a spiritual realm that overshadows the concrete world. Apparently most Asians already are prepared to accept the fact of spiritual reality. This has made it relatively easy for Pentecostals to reach animistic cul-tures. By demonstrating that the God of the Bible, the risen Lord, has offered to intervene in the problems of life, not only for the eternal issues, but also for the immediate practical needs of health and harvest, Pentecostals have been able to get inside the felt-needs of tribal peoples. (Menzies 1998, 25)

While I strongly agree with Menzies that shamanism-affected societies are generally more sensible to “spiritual reality,” I propose that the above-men-tioned “concern for the immediate and the practical” is not and has never been exclusive to Pentecostalism. Human beings lifted prayers for health, rain, and harvest since the dawn of human history. Long before Pentecostal-ism, even long before Protestantism came onto the historical scene, Catholic and Orthodox churches practiced special prayer services for the sick, for the protection of sailors and travelers, and other practical human needs throughout the history of the Church. On the surface, there is nothing par-ticularly this-worldly about Pentecostalism that makes it more concerned with human problems and needs than any other Christian denomination. Likewise, human obsession with the attempts to “manipulate God” and to re-describe the relationship with God in market terms is nothing new in the history of Christendom. I suggest that historically the efforts to “bar-gain with God” reached their epitome in the absurdity of Catholic practices of selling and granting indulgences in the Middle Ages when “remission of sins” was re-described in monetary value and the humanistic fetishization of faith reached its peak. This, surely, fits the description of “elements of magic and belief that we have the power to create our own reality”! Still, we do not call the corrupt Catholic priests of the Middle Ages “shamans,” nor do we reduce the Catholic Church to shamanism.

If multitudes of Christian believers all over the world constantly lift prayers for health and prosperity in the same human-centered, this-worldly oriented manner, why do we primarily associate “human-centeredness” with Pentecostalism? Perhaps, the reason is that it was from within Pente-


costalism that the notorious “theology of prosperity” (“prosperity gospel,” “word-of-faith” theology,29 “faith gospel,” “name-it-and-claim-it,” “positive statement theology”) emerged and formulated this universally-present, inherently human “human-centeredness” as a vocal, explicit, and aggres-sively self-imposing doctrine. Historically, “prosperity gospel” began to take a recognizable shape in the usa in 1950s through the Evangelical Pentecostal revival movements with the emphasis on the principles of divine blessing, faith healing, and divine reciprocity.30 It is strongly associated with the names of E. W. Kenyon, Oral Roberts, T.L. Osborn, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Cope-land, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Bruce Wilkinson, among the latest.

So, what is specifically shamanistic about the “theology of prosperity” and what do indigenous folk religions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have to do with the historical emergence and popularization of this doctrine? Are we forgetting that the “theology of prosperity” is a cultural product of North American Evangelical Christianity? Paul Gifford’s expresses similar doubts:

Without some idea of the faith gospel, it is possible to miss some of the com-plexity of some developments within Christianity globally. Thus, a recent study of Korean charismatic Christianity claims that “Korean Christianity has become almost completely shamanized.” The author proves the “shaman-istic orientation” of the theology of Paul Yonggi Cho by expounding Cho’s exegesis of 3 John 231…. Yet everything Cho understands by prospering has

29. “Name-it-and-claim-it” or “the word of faith” (wof) or “positive confession theol-ogy” states that complete healing (of spirit, soul, and body) is included in Christ’s atone-ment and therefore is available here and now to all who believe. The biblical passages frequently cited in support of this doctrine are Isaiah 53: 5, “By his wounds we are healed,” and Matthew 8: 17, which says that Jesus healed the sick so that “This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.” Because Isaiah speaks in the present tense (“we are healed”), wof teaches that believers should accept the reality of a healing that is already theirs. Accepting this healing is done by confessing the verse or verses found in the Bible declaring they are healed (i.e., word of faith) and then believing them fully without doubt. It is not an act of denying the pain, sickness, or disease, but an act of denying its right to supersede the receiving of the gift mentioned in Isaiah 53: 5. According to adherents, sickness is an attempt by Satan to rob believers of their divine right to total health. The same principle applies to prosperity, suc-cess, and so forth.

30. “Give, and it will be given to you.” (Luke 6: 38).31. “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with

you, even as your soul is getting along well” (3 John 2).


been taught in exactly that form by the faith gospel for years, and 3 John 2 has been one of its key texts. The emphasis on this-worldly blessing is too read-ily attributed to shamanism, with no reference to what is taught in a whole swathe of Christianity in America. (Gifford 2001, 63)

“The emphasis on this-worldly blessing is too readily attributed to sha-manism,” argues Paul Gifford. Or may it also be that the emphasis on this-worldly orientation is too readily attributed to Pentecostalism as a global phenomenon? Even though the “prosperity gospel” historically emerged from within Pentecostalism, many Pentecostal groups never embraced this doctrine and some even harshly reject it as a heretical deviation from the original Christian gospel.32 Pentecostal critics of the “theology of prosper-ity” generally agree that it is a distortion of the biblical doctrine of “blessings and curses.”33 The “prosperity gospel” takes “the blessings” part out of con-text, overemphasizes blessings (divine love) over curses (divine justice), and makes the happy-go-lucky principle the cornerstone of Christian faith. This unbalanced perspective, which takes one part of the doctrine to the extreme and diminishes all others, results in heretical deviation.

Many Pentecostal critics theologically refute the “theology of prosperity,” and many Pentecostal groups are also overtly skeptical about the “happy-clappy” charismatic expressions of spirituality, unrestrained emotionalism, and sensationalism in the church. Among them are the conservative Pente-costal groups, which place a great emphasis on Christian suffering, content-ment, and martyrdom today. For example, the so-called “Old Pentecostals” in contemporary Russia and the former communist bloc, which survived harsh persecutions under the communist regime, exhibit an excessively puritan legalistic martyr mentality up to this day. They often utilize escha-tological rhetoric or address other Christian groups in Russia and Eastern Europe with warnings such as “the end times is approaching,” “prepare for tribulations,” and “the government will cease our religious freedom again.” At the same time, these “Old Pentecostal” groups are authentically Pente-

32. See Klassen 2009; Olson 2012.33. “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing if you obey

the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.” (Deuteronomy 11: 26–28).


costal in a sense that they speak in tongues, prophesy, and run deliverance ministries and exorcism ministries.

What is it about human thought that makes it constantly oscillate between polar opposites? What is it about human nature that makes us over-empha-size one perspective at the expense of all others and create a conceptual idolatry by putting a certain doctrine or ideology into the center of the system? A nineteenth-century “prince of preachers” Charles H. Spurgeon famously proclaimed: “I believe that it is anti-Christian and unholy for any Christian to live with the object of accumulating wealth” (Carted 1988, 216). A century later the pendulum swings back: Kenneth Copeland (1974, 51) declares that “poverty is under the curse of the Law” and a televangelist Robert Tilton postulates that “being poor is a sin.”34 Perhaps the “theology of prosperity” simply tries to make up for centuries of the “Christianity equals poverty” mentality? Perhaps it overcompensates for the centuries of the predominance of another quasi-Christian doctrine: self-imposed legalistic asceticism in the name of “salvation through self-mortification”?

Is it possible to conceive that the “theology of prosperity,” with its over-emphasis on the ultimate redemption from poverty, illness, and oppression, can partly (only partly) be explained by the overall Protestant infatuation with the idea of sola fide salvation and de jure redemption from the “curse of sin and (spiritual) death”? Protestantism celebrates the fact that Christ’s redemptive work on the cross was “complete,” “resulting in Christians who are joyous because of the full forgiveness of sins.”35 Thus, the “prosperity gospel” embodies the idea that the New Testament church should be the place for redemption, healing and restoration, not for blaming and con-demnation. It highlights the biblical principle that the role of the church in society should be “to preach good news to the poor, …to bind up the bro-kenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61: 1).

Eventually, this Protestant joy and zeal is contagious and spreads to all other areas of religious life, including the economic side of existence. A Weberian classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2003 [1905]) a century ago elucidated the intrinsic connection between Protes-

34. Robert Tilton, “Success in Life,” program on TBN, 27 December 1990. 35. Shishko, William, What Is a Protestant Church; http://www.opcli.org/pdfs/Whatisa-

ProtestantChurch.pdf.


tant work ethics and capitalist economics. Is it possible to apply a Weberian model to the “theology of prosperity”? Is it a coincidence that the “theol-ogy of prosperity” arose from within the most enthusiastic layers of North American Protestantism after World War II, during the golden era of Amer-ican capitalism? Is it possible to conceive of the “theology of prosperity” as a religious-economic cultural phenomenon, an alloy of exuberant Protestant religious enthusiasm with capitalist aspirations? What is the “prosperity gos-pel” if not a spiritualized, lofty version of the “American dream”? I find the confirmation for this line of reasoning in the words of Alan Boraas: “Gos-pel prosperity or Christian materialism… does for 21st-century corporate capitalism what early 20th-century Protestantism did for regular capitalism: connect economics to God’s blessing.… Wealth has become a manifestation of the sacred” (Boraas 2012). South Korea seems to have undergone a sim-ilar process in the post-war aftermath, according to Sung-Gun Kim, who speaks of “the affinity between Evangelical Religion/Pentecostal Christian-ity and capitalism” in his native land:

After the Korean War, in Martin’s terminology [Martin 1993: 153], the whole US Protestant package of religion including Pentecostalism, economic dynamism, progress, and egalitarianism could be welcomed by many for-ward-looking Koreans as good for them and good for Korea. As a result, in post-war Korea, Protestantism became an important and indispensable link between the US Government and the authoritarian regimes of Park Chun-ghee, Chun Duwhan and Noh Taewoo. (Kim 2006, 23–38)

From South Korea to Brazil, from Nigeria to Russia, the non-Western nations “unpacked” “the us Protestant package” after World War II, and now the “theology of prosperity” is triumphantly marching throughout the world in a post-industrial pseudo-Christian quest to build the “king-dom of God” on earth in socio-economic terms. Curiously, the period after World War II in the usa was also marked by the increased popularity of psychiatry, psychology, and other mental health medical professions, which explicitly articulated the importance of boosting emotional well-being and mental health of the population. Thus, the emergence of the “theology of prosperity” in the usa in 1950s coincided with the publication of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), whose author and co-founder of the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry (1951), Norman Vincent Peale, laid the foundation for the religion-based psychoanalysis and the “positive think-


ing” movement. A Methodist and later a Reformed Church member, Nor-man Vincent Peale greatly influenced the development of the “prosperity gospel” in the us, as Harvey Cox points out in his Fire from Heaven (1995, 272).

The present essay provides only a very brief sketch of a number of pos-sible reasons for the emergence and popularization of the “theology of prosperity” across the Christian world, aiming to demonstrate that it is too complex a phenomenon to approach lightly. There are too many underly-ing economic, psycho-social, ideological and political currents that we must take into account when analyzing the “theology of prosperity” as a histori-cal phenomenon. Some critics even argue that the “prosperity gospel” is not based in the Christian gospel at all, but in obscure New Age movements along with hints of Hinduism and Oriental philosophy (Jones 2010). So, again, what is the “theology of prosperity” and why does it seem to resonate with shamanism?

“Human-Centrism” Versus “Theo-centrism”: The Ancient Battle

As previously established, the “theology of prosperity” is primarily defined as a heretical deviation from the original Christian gospel. What are the roots of this heresy? Is it rooted in corrupted, sinful, human-cen-tered “Adamic nature” which the Bible exposes all so critically? Is “human-centeredness” simply “human-all-too-human” (Nietzsche 2012 [1878]) to utilize classical Nietzschean terminology? Is it part of “universal human nature” that we all seem to share? Or does it emanate from the shamanic background of indigenous folk religions? What is this presumed “human-centeredness” and why is it negatively associated with shamanism (as a kind of egotism, deviating from the original Christian ideals of self-denial and self-sacrifice)? Is it possible to anthropologically demonstrate that traditional shamanistic cultures are inherently “human-centered” and “this-worldly oriented”? Most importantly, is “human-centeredness” a valid anthropo-logical or social scientific category? Perhaps, we are slipping again onto the level of philosophical abstractions and conceptual speculations?

Who is a shaman, after all? A traditional shaman-master, a charismatic leader of the tribe, a spirit-medium is primarily defined as a mediatory fig-


ure between the world of spirits and the world of humans. Traditional sha-mans attend to the basic needs of their communities in the same pragmatic manner as priests, doctors, teachers, and politicians of today do in a modern society. Then, what is it that sets shamans apart as particularly “human-cen-tered” charismatic protagonists?

What I find most baffling and confusing in regard to the above-men-tioned negative association of the “theology of prosperity” with shamanism in the sociology of religion (termed as a “degradation” or “distortion” of the original Christian doctrine) is the fact that this kind of negative associa-tion — paradoxically enough — reaffirms the validity and the cogency of the Theo-centric Christian ethos in the academic discourse.

The Theo-centric ethos is ultimately Other-centered: it venerates the tout autre36 transcendental Other (Creator) and humbles self (creation). It stands as an antithesis to human-centrism (philosophical humanism37), which puts humans into the center of the self-elliptic relational system and downplays the significance of divine authority in the cosmic drama. By contrast with self-consumed, self-centered, and self-glorifying anthropocentrism, the Theo-centric Christian ethos emphasizes self-humbling, self-denial, and self-sacrifice for the sake of the Other. Theologically, the Theo-centric prin-ciple of self-humbling-Other-worship is reflected in the nature of the triune God: God the Father glorifies the Son and the Holy Spirit, Jesus seeks to glorify the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives all the glory to the Father and the Son. “Love… is not self-seeking” (I Corinthians 13: 5). The unconditional divine love is most powerfully manifest in “the spectacle of the Cross [which] reveals the vast difference between a god who proves himself through power and One who proves himself through love” (Yancey 1992, 122).

Christian lofty ideals of self-denial and self-sacrifice for the sake of the Other stand in striking contrast to the ancient self-centered human tempta-

36. Tout autre is a term coined by Jacque Derrida to signify ‘wholly other’ in post-onto-theological metaphysics. See Derrida 1995.

37. The term “humanism” here should not be confused with the term “humanism” in a humanitarian sense. According to Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, “There are two meanings: 1. Any philosophy or system of thought, that begins with man alone, in order to try to find a unified meaning of life; 2. that part of humanistic thinking in the above wider sense that stresses the hope of an optimistic future for mankind.” (1998, 216). I use the term humanism solely in the first meaning of the word.


tion to become “like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 5). A great deception came into the world with the fruit of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”: a Nietzschean “will to power,” a “need of human self-con-trol” (Lamont 1997, 21), a satanic delusion that humans know better and it is up to humanity to “play God,” and mold the shape of the world as they see fit. A humanistic ideal prevailed in the universe, the ideal of self-seeking, self-veneration, self-exaltation and ultimately, self-destruction.

“I teach you beyond-man. Man is something that shall be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass him?” demands Nietzschean Zarathustra; “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is not a transition and a destruction.… I love him who worketh and inventeth to build a house for beyond-man and make ready for him earth, animal and plant; for thus he willeth his own destruction.”

(Nietzsche 1899, 5–8)

“O morning star, son of the dawn!” mourns in response the ancient Jew-ish prophet Isaiah, “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly.… I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14: 12–14)

The ancient transcendental battle unfolds. What force can withstand this satanic delusion, what power can refute this ancient temptation to self-exal-tation?

“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5: 1, 8) “Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life,” scoffs the Nietzschean Antichrist in response.

(Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1999 [1888], 23) “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5: 5)“Beyond-man is the significance of earth.… I conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to earth and do not believe those who speak unto you of superterrestial hopes!” (Nietzsche 1899, 5–6)“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but who-ever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9: 23–24).


“All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide and rather revert to the animal than sur-pass man?” (Nietzsche 1899, 5)“If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”

(Matthew 5: 39) “Do not judge, and you will not be judged.” (Luke 6: 37)I teach you beyond-man… I teach you a humble-man…

Self and Other … Self-exaltation and Self-sacrifice … Self-attachment and Self-denial … Death and Resurrection … Darkness and Light … Imma-nence and Transcendence.

If we agree with Hegelian dialectics that human thought oscillates between thesis and antithesis before it finally comes to a balanced synthesis (see Hegel 1874), why does it never do so? When will the battle of contra-dictory passions end? When will the tensions be released? Will the pendu-lum ever come to rest?

Now, how gravely inappropriate was the above multi-genre dialectic from the standpoint of the disciplinary rigor of the sociology of religion? I purposefully employed Nietzschean methodological irony in order to allegorically demonstrate that 1. “human-centeredness” is a philosophical-theological category not applicable for the social scientific analysis of the relationship between Pentecostalism and shamanism (or if it is, then the discussion automatically transcends onto the multidisciplinary plane); and 2. the negative association of the “theology of prosperity” with shamanism on the basis of their presumed shared “human-centeredness” (termed as a “degradation” or “distortion” of the original Christian doctrine) reaffirms the validity and the cogency of the Theo-centric Christian ethos in the aca-demic discourse.

By the way, what happened to the ancient “spiritual battle” between the powers of darkness and the powers of light? We know the story. On the transcendental plane, in eternity, the ancient battle between Christ and Antichrist had already been resolved. “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn” (Isaiah 14: 12–14). As Samuel Hio-Kee Ooi (2006, 160) rightly observes, “Christ has already won the victory once and for all.” In the meanwhile, the ancient battle continues as grotesque as ever in our self-elliptic temporal-spacial human-centered humanistic universe.


It perpetuates within the context of the New Age movement and contempo-rary neo-shamanisms,38 which—according to Roberte Hamayon—gravely distorted indigenous shamanistic traditions:

Neo-shamanisms are imbued by an overwhelming, multifaceted stress on the Self. Their various aspects and purposes can be adequately subsumed within the wider concept of “self-actualization,” which they often explicitly claim.… Neo-shamanic practice is no longer a ritual action, it is a totally self-centered mode of behavior.… Neo-shamanic practice is directed towards the Self instead of spirits and participants as in traditional ritual!

(Hamayon 2000, 10–11)

Self-actualization, self-development, self-transcendence, self-enlighten-ment, transcendence to higher spiritual planes, self-realization, self-culti-vation, transcendence to higher planes of existence…. These have been the key words for neo-shamanisms, esotericism, theosophy and the New Age movement for many decades now. Decades? Roberte Hamayon traces these ideas back to Greek philosophy and calls Socrates “the first neo-shaman,” who “advocated “soul-journeys,” with the aim of “self-improvement,” “self-development” and “self-transformation” (Hamayon 2000, 10)

“O morning star, son of the dawn!… You said in your heart, ‘… I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the most High’” (Isaiah 14: 12–14). It is no surprise, then, that the New Age movements and neo-shamanisms have always faced a severe backlash from Christian critics who claim that all neo-shamanist and New Age ideas are an “egocentric, … self-centered, …demonic conspiracy, …satanic plot to overthrow Christian-ity” (Saliba 2004, 308–12).

Here it is important to clarify that the New Age movement (including neo-shamanisms and neo-paganisms) is an extremely complex global phenom-enon and certainly cannot be reduced to the solitary theme of self-centered human-worship. Another major concern for the New Age movement has been a pantheistic nature-worship, environmental protection and nature-preservation. The biocentric ethos of New Age has been another target of a Christian critique, which exposes the worship of the creation (immanence) instead of the Creator (transcendence) as a conceptual idolatry.

Why does this idolatrous fixation on the creation (matter, material reality)

38. Promoted mainly by Michael Harner, among others.


stir so much jealousy in the “Ancient of Days” Creator God of Abrahamic religions? (“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Exodus 20: 4); “Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the Lord your God, and do not erect a sacred stone, for these the Lord your God hates” (Leviticus 26: 1). Theologically, a conceptual idolatry is a distor-tion of the original three-dimensional Theo-centric paradigm of existence, where the Self (subject) is a zero on the coordinate scale, the Other (object) is on horizontal axis and the tout autre transcendental Other (Creator) is on vertical axis. Within the threefold Theo-centric paradigm of existence one’s identity is grounded in the absolute love of God. This being-grounded in the tout autre transcendental Other provides absolute security and fulfilment, which cannot be achieved in the relationship with the creation-bound rela-tivistic Other, with whom recognition must be earned through the concep-tual power-struggle. Thus, identifying the Invisible, the Non-material and the Transcendental with the prime source of redemption helps prevent the fetishisation of matter and the conceptual abuse of the Other.

What happened in the Garden of Eden? Having defied the significance of a vertical relationship with the tout autre transcendental Other, human beings reduced their relational paradigm to the two-dimensional tempo-ral-spacial parameters of materialistic universe and idolatrously identified the horizontally-related Other (creation) as a point of departure in dynam-ics of personal self-identification. Nature becomes “god” (pantheism), humans become “god” (humanism), Science becomes “god” (scientism), and so forth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. Man commits idolatry whenever he honours and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example Satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc.” (Chapman/Liberia Editrie Vaticana 1999, 460)

Redemption is not associated with the salvific grace of the Almighty any longer. Instead, idolatry prevails. Superstitious occult practices inside and outside the church associate redemption with the magic protective power of shamanic amulets, talismans, images, “sacred stones, carved stones,” and “idols in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” Non-religious and quasi-religious human-centred philos-ophies and ideologies endeavour to redeem human society by re-building a


materialistic utopia of paradise on earth (Enlightenment humanism, com-munism, trans-humanism, and other). The divinization of the human being ranges from reification of human intellect in general (scientism) to divini-zation of individuals (cult of personality) in societies that attempt to build a humanistic “kingdom of heaven.”

Why do all human-centred immanence-bound attempts to redeem humanity in materialistic terms always fail? One reason is that both reli-gious and non-religious matter is relativistic and temporarily-conditioned; it tends to be quickly exhausted and cannot provide stable grounds for human redemption. There is nothing “real” in the world of material reality: it is a fleeting ephemeral world with no absolutes and no transcendental anchors. It is a world of “partial, provisional signifiers” (see Derrida 1974), hollow concepts and relativistic “truths” trapped in the endless play of différance in search for identity and meaning. There is nothing absolute to grasp on. Hav-ing defied the vertical, Self and Other now desperately need one another to define who they are. Self and Other, subject and object, thesis and antithesis – binary oppositions are doomed to be constantly “pulling the blanket,” con-ceptually marginalizing and centralizing, devilizing and idolizing, ostraciz-ing and exoticizing one another in the two-dimensional universe.

By contrast, within the three-dimensional Theo-centric paradigm, the vertical axis (divine authority) cuts through dichotomous binary opposi-tions, mitigates gravitational pull between polarities, releases the tension within the relational symmetry, and resolves humanistic antagonisms.

To summarize, the Theo-centric ethos defies: 1. human-centrism (neo-shamanisms); 2. idolatrous fixation on matter, material objects (amulets, idols) and humanistic attempts to manipulate reality (magic rituals) as a source of redemption (traditional shamanisms). Philosophically, the Theo-centric ethos transcends categorical dualisms of “good and evil” by re-estab-lishing the absolute divine authority of the tout autre transcendental Other in the relational paradigm.39

How far does the Theo-centric ethos spread? Is it possible for Christians to become consumed with “satanically-inspired” self-centeredness? Yes. Is it possible for Christian believers—Pentecostal or non-Pentecostal —to

39. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged” (Luke 6: 37, Matthew 7: 1).


degrade onto the level of occult superstitions and put their hope for redemp-tion into shamanic amulets and magic rituals? No doubt.

On the other hand, is it possible for traditional shamans and contempo-rary neo-shamans to exhibit the most altruistic self-sacrificial, Other-exalt-ing features? Certainly, yes.

Is it possible for human-centered, self-cultivating ideas, and philosophies in a form of “prosperity gospel” to creep into the church? Yes. Do these ideas originate from Hellenistic philosophy, do they emerge from within Chris-tianity, or do they emanate from indigenous shamanisms? Yes, yes, and yes. “Human-all-too-human” self-centeredness has no doctrinal limits or disciplinary boundaries: the battlefield for the ancient battle is the human heart.40 From Hellenistic humanism to Christian humanism, from Renais-sance humanism to Enlightenment humanism, from Communist human-ism to postmodern technocratic trans-humanism— human-centered philosophies and ideologies are woven into the fabric of all philosophical systems and religious worldviews of all times.

So, to return to our main point, what is the fundamental difference between Pentecostalism and shamanism? May this dichotomy be conceptu-ally overturned, deconstructed, and confined to a unitary frame? Should we agree with Mircea Eliade that “the dialectic of the sacred permits all revers-ibilities” (Eliade and Trask 1972, xviii)?

In the human-centered universe, in the humanism-plagued church, the challenge remains for Pentecostalism to reformulate its “Pentecostal apolo-getics” within the context of the original Christian Theo-centric ethos and to demonstrate that Pentecostal expressions of spirituality are not human-centric or matter-bound. On the contrary, they serve to glorify the tout autre transcendental Other, and to cultivate a Christ-like “humble-man.” How can Pentecostalism respond to this challenge?

40. How academically appropriate is “the human heart” metaphor? Is it a culturally-universal concept that exists on some transcendental platform? What is “the human heart” if not a contrived description of something that does not exist other than from the biologi-cal perspective? I leave it up to my readers to deconstruct the “human heart” concept and allow me the “sin” of metaphorical absolutism.


Theo-centric Ethos Applied: Pentecostal “Exorcist Ethics” and “Prophetic Ethics”

If Pentecostal exorcist practices of “spiritual warfare” look so simi-lar to indigenous shamanistic exorcist practices, “What, then, is so unique in Christianity” (Ooi 2006, 161)? This challenge to Pentecostalism by Sam-uel Hio-Kee Ooi and his concern is perfectly justified. We have established that from the Christian theological perspective, humanity is caught up in a permanent “spiritual battle” between the “forces of light” (Christ) and the “forces of darkness” (Antichrist). Theologically, we seem to have found a stable ground and a comfort zone where Pentecostalism can dwell safely as long as it can doctrinally demonstrate that it is an essentially Theo-centric and Other-venerating branch of Christianity. But how does the above-dis-cussed Theo-centric ethos of Christianity apply to specifically Pentecostal exorcist methods?

This challenge becomes even harder in light of the observation about tra-ditional shamanistic “spiritual warfare” made by Mircea Eliade:

Shamans are “pre-eminently the anti-demonic champions; they combat not only demons and disease, but also the black magicians…. The military elements that are of great importance in certain types of Asian shamanism (lance, cuirass, bow, sward, etc.) are accounted for by the requirements of war against the demons, the true enemies of humanity…. Shamanism defends life, health, fertility, the world of “light” against “death, diseases, sterility, disaster, and the world of “darkness.” The shaman’s combativeness sometimes becomes an aggressive mania: in certain Siberian traditions shamans are believed to challenge one another constantly in an animal form. But such a degree of combativeness is rather exceptional…. What is fundamental and universal is the shaman’s struggle against what we would call “the powers of evil.”

(Eliade and Trask 1972, 508–9)

Are shamans really “the anti-demonic champions”? If yes, then, what “powers of light” do they represent? What makes traditional shamans of indigenous folk religions any different from Pentecostal “deliverance min-isters” and from Jesus Christ himself, who allegedly evicted “demons and unclean spirits” wherever he went throughout his ministry? In fact, the exact accusation of Christ by the Pharisees in the Gospels was that he was


in alliance with the “powers of evil”: “He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons” (Mark 3: 22). What was Jesus’ response to that?

So Jesus called them and spoke to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. … And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.… I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be for-given them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” (Mark 3: 23–30)

Certainly, there is a number of theological (Christological) arguments that may be provided in an attempt to demonstrate that Jesus Christ was evicting “evil spirits” by the power of the “Holy Spirit” (the tout autre tran-scendental Other) while indigenous shamans combat “evil spirits” through witchcraft (“evil spirits” fighting against “evil spirits”). Christ is a “transcen-dental Lamb of God,” a paragon of self-sacrificial love, who “humbled him-self by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2: 8). The primary emphasis of his ministry was not on “evicting of spirits” but on repentance of sins, holy living and self-sacrificial love for the Other (“love the Lord your God with all your heart,” “love your neighbor as your-self ” [Matthew 22: 37–38]; “love your enemies” [Luke 6: 27]).

Thus, “repentance of sins,” “holy living,” and “self-sacrificial love” are the key principles that mark the difference between the Pentecostal Christian “spiritual warfare” and the shamanistic “spiritual combat.” As argued earlier, from the Pentecostal Christian perspective, true “deliverance ministry” is impossible without “repentance of sins” as a first and most crucial step, “nec-essary to break the grip of demons” (Ooi 2006, 148). Pentecostals believe that personal sin “gives grounds” to demonic spirits (Murrell 1995, 89; and Jacobs 1997) to stay and oppress a person or a community. The “spiritual world” much like the physical world has the laws by which it functions, so, according to the laws of the “spiritual world,” the “evil spirits” know they have a “legal right” to occupy territories where “sin abides.” Indigenous sha-mans, on the contrary, have no or little concern with the “holy living” or “repentance of sins” among their community members—their approaches to exorcism are entirely different (ritualistic). Therefore, Pentecostals believe that shamanic (or any other non-Christian) exorcism of “evil spirits” is cer-


tainly possible, but useless and, eventually, dangerous, as in the following biblical passage:

When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11: 24–26)

“If ‘the house’ is empty, that is, not filled with the Holy Spirit, the evil spir-its will return in greater power and things will get worse,” speculate Pente-costals. In other words, unless a person in question repents of sins, yields one’s will to the Almighty, and receives the protection of the “Holy Spirit,” he or she will remain susceptible to “demonic oppression.” Conrad Mur-rell clearly claims that from the Christian perspective the “spiritual war-fare” between indigenous shamans and witch doctors is not the “holy battle” between the “powers of light” and the “powers of darkness” but a reflec-tion of the ongoing “spiritual battle” between “evil spirits” tearing apart the “kingdom of darkness” from inside:

We sometimes make the mistake of assuming that Satan’s kingdom is an orderly kingdom. There is an order of authority, but it is anything but orderly. His kingdom is made up of thieves, liars, traitors, rebels and selfish, scheming spirits. They will betray, hate and turn on each other. Satan does not cast out Satan, but demons do cast out demons. This is the way heathen witch doctors wage war against each other. It is a supernatural warfare using the powers of darkness, and one witch doctor may succeed in killing the other without ever seeing him. He simply dispatches his demons which overcome the demons who are protecting and working for his adversary. (Murrell 1995, 120)

Thus, to the independent observer, a Pentecostal “spiritual warfare” may look similar to that of shamanism, but from the first-person insider per-spective (specifically, from the Pentecostal insider perspective) these two are entirely different. And, of course, the tables can be turned — indige-nous shaman-masters and contemporary neo-shamans may well produce all kinds of possible counter-arguments and discourses of demonization of Christian spirituality and doctrine, demonstrating that shamanism indeed represents “the powers of light” while Christianity eventually represents “the powers of darkness.” Dualisms are potentially reversible — the signifi-cance of the Nietzschean warning does not cease. So, the Pentecostal line of


argumentation is logical and coherent as long as we subscribe to the Chris-tian Theo-centric paradigm of existence and stay on the Christian theologi-cal level of explanation.

However, what is the use of Christian theology for the sociology of reli-gion? Perhaps, it depends on the kind of questions the sociology of religion asks and the kind of interpretive claims it makes. Harvey Cox, Karin Hor-watt, Walter Hollenweger, David Martin, Sung-Gun Kim, Sylvie Shaw, and many others are convinced that Pentecostalism is but shamanized Christi-anity or Christian spiritism. Rosalind I. J. Hackett’s, Paul Gifford’s, Wonsuk Ma, Allan Anderson, Hwa Yung and Lee Wanak seriously question this pre-sumption. So, who speaks for whom and who defines whom in the soci-ology of religion? Should we include first-person subjective accounts of personal faith by religious believers in the sociology of religion? Should we let religious believers “speak for themselves,” as Lee Wanak suggests?41

Following Lee Wanak’s proposition, I conducted fieldwork at the Pente-costal “Prophetic Café” at Arise Tokyo Christ Church in Tokyo, Japan. There I interviewed former occult practitioners who converted to Christianity and joined Arise Tokyo Christ Church as a result of being exposed to the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” at the Prophetic Café. This Prophetic Café is a missionary-oriented Christian Pentecostal café at the heart of Tokyo, where one can get a cup of high quality coffee, cookies, and “Holy-Spirit-inspired” prophesy (in the form of a prayer). The pastor and staff at the Prophetic Café claim to be “Holy-Spirit anointed,” and challenge fortunetellers and occult practi-tioners in Japan to visit their café and experience “God’s love and the power of the Holy Spirit.” As a result, a number of occult practitioners converted to Christianity, joined the church, and now function at Arise Tokyo Christ Church as “Holy-Spirit-anointed” Christian prophets. Some of them claim that when they responded to the Pentecostal challenge and came to receive Christian prophesy at Arise Tokyo Christ Church, they were able to experi-ence a “greater source of power” than they had known before.

The purpose of my fieldwork at Arise Tokyo Christ Church was to test the hypothesis by Harvey Cox that “Pentecostals incorporate into their worship patterns the insights and practices of… shamanic trance, healing, ancestor veneration…, frequently without realizing it” (Cox 1993, 31) [my emphasis]

41. Lee Wanak, in an email to Reynalds; see Reynalds 2000.


Is it really true that Pentecostals in Asia and beyond are oblivious or uncon-cerned in regard to doctrinal and experiential distinctions between Christi-anity and shamanism?

Among the questions I asked the “prophetically-anointed” members of Arise Tokyo Christ Church were: “How do you experientially ensure that the prophetic (supernatural) knowledge that you receive when you pray for people comes from the “right” source (that is, the “Holy Spirit”)? After all, the Bible warns us against false prophetic spirits and false prophets, and teaches us that the “discernment of spirits” should have a special place in the prophetic ministry in the church. So, as a Christian prophet, how do you ensure that the source of your revelation is the “Holy Spirit?” Interestingly, the church members, including the pastor of the church, who were raised in the Christian environment and never deeply challenged their spiritual expe-riences, could not sufficiently answer these questions. They could perfectly justify the alleged differences between Christian and occult experiences on a doctrinal level, but they struggled to experientially define the difference between the revelations inspired by the “Holy Spirit” and the revelations which come from “false” (demonic) sources. They quoted appropriate bib-lical verses to doctrinally support their beliefs or said things like “Shinkō de wakaru” (I know by faith). In contrast, those church members who had been fortunetellers in their life prior to Christian conversion were able to experientially identify the difference between the occult and the Christian prophetic experiences. They reported having been exhausted and wiped out after their spirit-medium sessions as occult practitioners. They also claimed having struggled with the complete accuracy of the information as fortune-tellers. In contrast, having experienced Christian conversion and the “bap-tism of the Holy Spirit,” they reported having the feelings of joy and peace when receiving the revelations from the “Holy Spirit” (allegedly). Over-all, former occult-practitioners-turned-Christians at Arise Tokyo Christ Church, reported having distinctly different experiences prior and poste-rior to their conversion “from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.”

Similarly, some of the Arise Tokyo Christ Church members who had not been involved in professional fortunetelling and occult practices but regu-larly visited fortunetellers and occult healers prior to their Christian con-version reported that their visits to fortunetellers and occult healers would


have given them only temporary emotional or physical relief. They claimed that their anxiety would always return later in a greater degree or, in the case with occult healing, the sickness would return in a different form and a higher intensity.

All the above experience-grounded narratives are purely subjective and do not prove anything on the objective plane other than the fact that there is a consensus among Pentecostals that: 1. occult healing, fortunetelling, and divination are real phenomena and have a “real” power; and 2. occult practices are inspired by evil spirits and always come at a price (for exam-ple, having been relieved from a “light” sickness by means of witchcraft, a subject can contract a more serious or life-threatening disease due to being involved in witchcraft).

To summarize, my fieldwork results at Arise Tokyo Christ Church in Tokyo, Japan, support the proposition by Rosalind I. J. Hackett’s, Paul Gif-ford’s, Wonsuk Ma, Allan Anderson and Hwa Yung, Lee Wanak and others that Pentecostalism and shamanism are religious-cultural counter-forces and that their apparent syncretism or hybridity is deceptive— it is nothing other than the recognition of the Other’s spiritual worldview as the correct interpretation of reality or “the joint acknowledgement of the world of spir-its” (Anderson 2005, 5).

The “Prophetic Café” case is a single example but it clearly demonstrates that Pentecostal Christians construct their religious-cultural identity as “spiritual warriors” through the discourse of demonization of occult spiri-tual practices manifest in pagan and neo-pagan religions and spirituali-ties. One must then wonder how Harvey Cox arrived at the conclusion that “On a global basis, Pentecostals incorporate into their worship patterns the insights and practices of … shamanic trance, healing, ancestor venera-tion…, frequently without realizing it” (Cox 1993, 31). Perhaps, as I have argued earlier, the first issue that the sociologists of religion should agree on is “What individuals, what social groups and communities should be considered the representative research target for the sociology of religion studying Pentecostalism in Asia and beyond? Who should be considered a representative model of Pentecostal Christianity: radical Pentecostals, moderate Pentecostals, or “lukewarm” religious syncretists who are not con-cerned with the “purity” of the Christian doctrine?”

As evident from the above, it may be argued that the Pentecostal “deliver-


ance ministry”— in contrast to that of shamanism—works on the principles of Christian theological “exorcist ethics,” which emphasize “repentance of sins,” “holy living,” and other Theo-centric ideals. Similarly, Pentecostalism elaborated a specific “prophetic moral code” for the “prophetic ministry,” whose “moral imperative” states that a prophet, above all, must be a “spiritu-ally mature” Christ-like “humble-man” whose primary focus when serving the community should be on glorifying God and humbling self:

Self-promotion leads to divination…. Those who attain prominence before humility will fall.… Therefore, if we have wisdom, we will seek humility before position.... The highest spiritual authority, Jesus, used His position to lay down His life.… He commanded those who came after Him to take up their crosses and do the same.… There is a simple factor that distinguishes false prophets from the genuine ones. False prophets use their gifts and other people for their own ends, in order to build up their own influence or min-istry. True prophets use their gifts in a self-sacrificing way, for the love of Christ and for the sake of His people. Self-seeking, self-promotion, and self-preservation are the most destructive forces in ministry.…

(Joyner 1997, 76–79)A prophet must be totally obedient to God. The prophetic ministry requires a higher standard of holiness than other ministries. Pride kills prophets. Vanity is the greatest threat to prophetic ministry. God will have to establish a deep work of humility in the life of anyone he intends to speak for him. Humility is essential. (www.kingwatch.co.nz/Prophetic_Ministry/character.htm)

Whether the Christian ideals of humility and servanthood are always lit-erally applied in practice in the church is a separate issue. However, it is obvious that the Pentecostal subculture has elaborated a moral-ethical Theo-centric counter-balance to human-centric heresies in the church. Pen-tecostal churches and theological seminaries often hold “prophetic confer-ences” or “prophetic training seminars” where they teach biblical principles of the “prophetic ministry” (for example, the above-mentioned Arise Tokyo Japan Church holds regular annual prophetic training seminars. There are multiple prophetic conferences and seminars held globally). At the pro-phetic conferences and seminars, Pentecostal theologians always emphasize the fact that “humility” and “servanthood” must be the cornerstone of any Christian ministry, be it “deliverance ministry,” “prophetic ministry,” or pas-toral ministry. Curiously, the sociology of religion studying Pentecostalism


focuses almost exclusively on the human-centric tendencies in the church (hence, the associations with shamanism) and almost completely ignores the Theo-centric ethics, which are also strongly promoted within the Chris-tian Pentecostal circles. In the meanwhile, Pentecostal theologians clearly emphasize that both the exorcist and the prophetic Pentecostal ministries are doctrinally and experientially different from those of shamanism.

Again, modern Pentecostals are not the first to emphasize the difference between the shamanistic “techniques of ecstasy” and the Christian “mystical rapture”:

Ecstasy, which comes from the ancient Greek extasis “a state of being beyond reason,” was… used in the West since the Middle Ages, especially with regard to “mystical rapture” and to the feeling of great happiness that Christian mys-tics reported to have experienced then. Thus the Christian Church consid-ered “trance” to be negative, typical of other religions than transcendental, therefore to be blamed. At the same time, the Church considered “ecstasy” to be rather positive but strictly reserved to mystics acknowledged as uniting with the Christian God. (Hamayon 2000, 2–3)

Thus, “being united with the Christian God” has been the prime theologi-cal factor distinguishing the Christian mystical rapture (Acts 10: 10–16, and II Corinthians, 12: 2–4) from the shamanistic trance since the Middle Ages. Thus, Pentecostalism (in a sense of supernatural manifestations of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”) should not be understood in a narrow Protestant sense. Traditional (Catholic, Orthodox) Churches have always emphasized the fact that the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” have never ceased and are for today. More-over, traditional Catholic and Orthodox Churches canonized “Holy-Spirit-inspired” Christian prophets and miracle-workers and venerated them as saints both historically and presently. Thus, Roman Catholic Church can-onized Joan of Arc (reportedly, famous for her divine revelations) in 1920 (by Pope Benedict XV) and Russian Orthodox Church canonized Blessed Matrona of Moscow in 1999 (by Patriarch Alexy II of Russian Orthodox Church). The case with Blessed Matrona of Moscow is of particular signifi-cance: a blind-born uneducated Russian woman who manifested the gifts of spiritual vision, paranormal cognition, precognition of future events, tele-pathic abilities, and supernatural healing lived fairly recently: from 1885 to 1952. She was recognized by Russian Orthodox Church both as a saint and as a spiritual warrior battling with “the forces of evil” in the supernatural realm:


The help which Matrona provided to her patients had nothing to do with magic spells, witchcraft, so-called “folk healing,” extrasensory perception and abilities or other magic rituals which “folk healers” conduct by getting in contact with the powers of evil. On the contrary, it [her supernatural ability] was of fundamentally different [from the occult], Christian nature. This is exactly why Blessed Matrona suffered so much hatred from folk healers and occult practitioners…. She often admitted to have fought an invisible battle with witch-doctors and occult practitioners in the spiritual realm.

[Russian, my translation]42

As demonstrated, the discourse on “spiritual warfare” is not and has never been a unique invention of Protestant Pentecostalism. The traditional Christian Church has always dissociated Christian spirituality from pagan and neo-pagan spirituality both doctrinally and experientially. But how can this distinction be comprehensively demonstrated and practically applied?

“Now about Spiritual Gifts… I Do Not Want You to Be Ignorant”

So, what are the practical experiential differences between the Pentecostal and the shamanistic psychic experiences? This is too big of a question, which requires a separate volume in itself, so here I would like to propose only a brief sketch of a few basic practical differences between Christian and non-Christian psychic experiences that the Pentecostal com-munities conceptualize.

First of all, what kind of psychic experiences do we have in mind when we talk about the Pentecostal “gifts of the Holy Spirit”? I Corinthians, chapter 12 presents a full list of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” as follows:

Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant.… There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.… There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord…. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of heal-ing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy,

42. See Life and Akafist of Holy Righteous Blessed Matrona of Moscow, 2008, 15–25.


to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines [my emphasis].… The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

(I Corinthians 12: 1–13)

So, there are exactly nine “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” where “the message of wisdom” and the message of knowledge (also known as “word of wisdom” and “word of knowledge”) can be best described in psychic terms as a kind of paranormal cognition. As earlier discussed, these “gifts” operate as instant and usually very particular supernatural knowledge of other indi-viduals’ inner thoughts, personal struggles, or private undisclosed informa-tion (with the biblical story of the Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4: 4–26, being one of the most famous examples). “Prophecy” also designates a divinely inspired utterance and may refer to both paranormal cognition and precognition of forthcoming events. “Faith” is usually referred to as a supernatural faith, empowering an individual to perform miracles or as a situational faith (Fee 1994, 168), enabling a Chris-tian to trust God under some unusual circumstances or to bring about cer-tain things for which they cannot claim some divine promise recorded in Scripture (Carson 1987, 38). “Healing” refers to divinely-inspired healing; “miraculous powers” may signify any supernatural signs or manifestations of the Holy Spirit (raising the dead (Acts 20: 9–12), casting out demons, and other supernatural feats.) “Distinguishing between spirits” is generally understood as a gift, which enables believers to ensure that prophesy and other miraculous manifestations in the church do in fact come from the “Holy Spirit” (Fee 1994, 171, Carson 1987, 40) “Tongues” designate a gift of miraculously speaking a human language that had not been previously learned (Acts 2: 3–4). In light of I Corinthians 13: 1 (“tongues of men and angels”), it may also designate a kind of “heavenly” language that is directed toward God (Fee 1994, 890). “Interpretation of tongues,” signifies a divinely-inspired ability to interpret the meaning of the message spoken in “tongues” into the language known to the audience.

Theologically, Pentecostals conceptualize that the only person ever having


the unlimited supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit was Jesus Christ (“incar-nated God”), who is portrayed in the Gospels to have had all the above-described gifts simultaneously operating at all times, including supernatural knowledge, revelations, precognition of events, demon-casting, healing, and so forth. However, as evident from the above biblical passage in I Corinthi-ans, chapter 12, and from the book of Acts, other “prophetically-anointed” biblical protagonists appear to have had only occasional impartations of the Spirit, receiving limited revelatory knowledge or guidance, in line with the above understanding of the Church as the body of Christ on earth, whose humanly-delimited individual members depend on each other for spiritual unity. This becomes the most important feature distinguishing Christian prophets from pagan and neo-pagan shaman-masters and spirit-mediums: Christian believers do not claim to possess the ability to produce supernatu-ral revelations or manifestations on requirement—there is no such a thing as a “professional,” “on-call” prophet. According to I Corinthians, chapter 12, the Holy Spirit provides supernatural knowledge or produces signs and wonders “as he determines,” when he43 determines, how he determines, and through whom he determines. It is true, however, that certain individuals possess what Pentecostals call a “prophetic anointing” or a “special calling” to conduct a “prophetic ministry” in the church. This requires “spiritual maturity,” “godly character,” and high integrity as well as specific training in the biblical foundation and ethics of the “prophetic ministry.”

Still, in the Christian Pentecostal context, any “born-again” individual can function as a “prophet” and be used by God on any occasion to channel the message of the “Holy Spirit” to the congregation (just as any individual may become a priest or a pastor of the church given the character and the train-ing). This characteristic distinguishes a Christian prophet from an occult fortuneteller, who claims to possess special psychic powers or exclusive extrasensory abilities. It also distinguishes a Pentecostal prophet from an indigenous shaman, who can conduct a séance on behalf of the commu-nity and come in contact with the world of the spirits through a ceremo-nial ritual. In contrast, a Christian prophet can address the Christian God in prayer on behalf of the community but there is no guarantee that the desired supernatural revelation will be received. In a word, Christian prophets do

43. I do not suggest here that the Holy Spirit has gender; I use “he” in accordance with the New International Version Bible translation.


not possess psychic powers, and any “born-again” Christian can become a “vessel” for the “Holy Spirit” to deliver a supernatural revelation or miracu-lous power.44 These may be defined as the most basic differences between the Pentecostal and the shamanistic psychic phenomena.

Second, the purpose of the Christian Pentecostal supernatural revelation (“word of knowledge,” “prophesy,” etc.) is not to satisfy curiosity about the future or to simply excite the senses as in popular fortunetelling, but “for edification and exhortation and comfort.… He who prophesies edifies the church” (I Corinthians 14: 3–4). In fact, prophetic precognition of the future events is relatively rare45 and the most regular manifestation of the “divinely-inspired utterances” are probably those of the “word of knowledge,” which have a counseling-comforting purpose in line with the definition of the Holy Spirit as the “Comforter” or the “Counselor” (John 14: 26). The gift of the “word of knowledge” appears to have the most prominent therapeutical psychosomatic effect in the lives of Pentecostal congregations.

Thus, there is a general consensus among Pentecostals that while the Holy Spirit bestows supernatural revelations on the church “as he determines” (I Corinthians 12: 11), seeking supernatural experience for the sake of expe-rience (as in the occult and fortunetelling) is dangerous and strongly dis-couraged in the Christian context (and particularly outside of it). To “those who seek supernatural experiences in the Christian community…, if it is an experience you are looking for, you are on dangerous ground,” warns Conrad Murrell; we are to seek “righteousness not experience” and “holi-ness, not power,” he urges (Murrell 1995, 120). “A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign” (Matthew 16: 4), are the exact words ascribed to Jesus. Rick Joyner similarly warns Pentecostals that a “prophetic addiction,” as he words it, like any other addiction, can be destructive. “It is more important for us to grow in faith and in wisdom than to have pro-phetic directives.… Receiving continuous words from the Lord which give us help and direction is often a sign of immaturity and weak faith”(Joyner 1997, 153). Here again, a Theo-centric, God-venerating principle applies (as the antithesis to human-centric power-seeking and sensationalism).

44. “For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encour-aged.” (I Corinthians 14: 31)

45. “When the Lord speaks to us specifically, it is usually because of the difficulties we are going to face.” Joyner 1997, 153.


“The “fortunetelling spirit” at source is a “spirit of a snake,” claims Yoshida Kazuyo, the pastor of Arise Tokyo Christ Church in her book Yogen Cafe: Kami no kotoba ga kikeru basho (A Prophetic Café: A place to hear God’s message) “It grips our thoughts and with time, it ceases our freedom; we become slaves of the spirit of fortunetelling. When we decide to do some-thing we feel anxiety unless we receive a fortunetelling prediction. Our free-dom of choice becomes debilitated.… Various professional fortunetellers use it unknowingly and become bound by the spirit of a snake” (Yoshida 2011, 83). [Japanese, my translation]. Yoshida gives a reference to the spirit-bound fortuneteller in the book of Acts, chapter 16:

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. (Acts 16: 16–18)

Pentecostal ministers often refer to the “spirit” described in the above bibli-cal passage as a “demonic spirit” of fortunetelling, which is quite capable of giving accurate bits of information and predictions but still is “demonic” by nature and does not come from the “right” source. Pentecostals (and a vast majority of non-Pentecostal Christians) believe that this is exactly the kind of spirit or spirits which “work” within non-Christian religions and spiri-tualities and enable the pagan and neo-pagan psychic mediums to exhibit paranormal cognitive abilities outside the Christian context.

From the same biblical passage we can draw another factor that distin-guishes a Pentecostal “prophetic ministry” from professional fortunetell-ing: it goes without saying that “prophetic ministries” in the church are not financially-driven—this should be inconceivable46—while professional for-tunetelling is often a quite profitable business.

46. I suggest this at risk of being crushed under “Hume’s Guillotine” of “Is-Ought” meta-ethical controversy, since what “is” (here: the biblical principle of free access to God’s supernatural gifts expressed in Acts 8: 14–20) does not necessarily imply what “ought” to be, nor does it guarantee that what “ought” to be is always practically applied in the church. See Hume 2011 (1739).


Finally, when the “supernatural knowledge” is revealed in the form of a prophesy (through prayer) in the church, there are no shaman-like rituals involved: no drumming, no dancing, no hallucinogenic drugs, no trance, no “soul flights,” no alternate states of consciousness (asc), no crystal ball, no Tarot cards, no tea leaves, no coffee grounds, no amulets, no idols, no magic rituals. No nothing.

These are only a few most basic differences, which distinguish the Pen-tecostal prophetic ministry from shamanic psychic phenomena. As estab-lished above, the present essay is biased towards Pentecostalism, but if we could also hear a shaman’s first-person insider perspective on the issue, it would greatly enrich the present discussion. A serious broad-scale fieldwork is required in order to highlight the practical experiential differences and similarities between Pentecostal and shamanistic psychic phenomena and their social impact on the lives of religious communities. Ideally, it would involve conducting interviews and questionnaires among Pentecostal and shamanic communities. Perhaps, the most provocative data would emerge from the first-person accounts of spiritual experience by former shamanic and neo-shamanic spirit-mediums who converted to Pentecostal Christi-anity and vice versa: from former Pentecostal Christians who converted to shamanisms and neo-shamanisms. Unless a serious broad-scale research is conducted, allowing religious subjects “to speak for themselves,” we will end up with the formulations in the sociology of religion, such as that by Karin Horwatt (1988, 128) who proposes that “the Pentecostal church serves all the functions of a shamanic environment.” To summarize, I believe that there are at least two major reasons why the sociology of religion could benefit from including more first-person per-spectives and subjective narrative accounts of religious experience into the analysis of social dynamics within religions communities: 1. the first-person insider perspectives will help counter-balance the third-person independent observer perspectives, which are often biased, misinformed, and superficial, and thus prevent sweeping generalizations and fallacious interpretations in the sociology of religion; 2. the first-person insider perspectives will enrich our understanding of how various religious groups construct and empower


their discourses of inherent authenticity and exclusivity of their religion by means of marginalizing and demonizing the Other. Thus, by listening more closely to the first-person insider perspectives of Pentecostals, sociologists of religion would be able to explore how Pentecostal communities construct their unique Pentecostal identities and persuade themselves that their rev-elations are authentically “Holy Spirit-inspired.” This will further elucidate how this rhetoric of authenticity and uniqueness of the Christian Pentecos-tal revelatory experience socially empowers Pentecostal congregations and gives them a competitive edge in the religious marketplace.

I propose that the above discourse of the “spiritual exclusivity” of the Christian revelation has a major effect on the psycho-mechanisms of con-version and evangelization, and as such works as one of the key factors contributing to the unprecedented expansion of Pentecostalism as the “fast-est-growing religion in the world.” As I have argued above, Pentecostal con-gregations largely rely on the experiences of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” for the acquisition of Christian doctrinal truths. Perhaps, the first proto-Pente-costal biblical protagonist would be the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John 4: 4–39, who, having been impressed with Christ’s super-natural knowledge about her past and her inner struggles, ran into the town and declared to everyone that she had met the Messiah. As a result, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did’” (John 4: 39). Two thousand years later, humans are still “human-all-too-human.” Many of the Pentecos-tals “believed in Him” (or sustained their Christian faith) because they evi-denced supernatural prophetic phenomena, witnessed exorcism, observed others speaking in tongues known to them (yet naturally unknown to the speaking subjects), and other numerous “miraculous signs and wonders” in the Christian context.

In this light, I suggest that Pentecostals should pay great respect to their Cessationist counterparts for whom the simple message of God’s love expressed and embodied in Christ dying on the cross is convincing enough, and who shoulder together as a “bastion of truth” and “moral majority” pro-tecting the sanctity of the inscripturalized revelation. Who are the Pente-costals, then? As I have been arguing thus far, Pentecostals are certainly not a “wicked generation.” However, as many Pentecostals might agree, Pente-costalism partly represents what I would call a “weak generation.” As Rick


Joyner (1997, 106) puts it, “Christians who become experience-oriented are invariably the weakest and most unstable in faith.” In my observation, prophecies, “word of knowledge,” exorcism, and occasional divine heal-ings have the most dramatic effect on Pentecostal adherents and as such become powerful tools of religious conviction and devotion to the Christian worldview. More importantly, these paranormal occurrences (including prophetic revelations, incidents of precognition of future events, and tele-pathic “messages of knowledge”) influence the receiving subjects’ decision-making abilities and are often reflected in their major life-altering decisions. In other words, they have significant social ramifications for the lives of Pen-tecostal religious communities. Thus, Pentecostals may be the “weak” gen-eration in terms of their “spiritual maturity,” but they are certainly a more powerfully equipped social force in the religious world scene as having the advantage of being an experience-oriented branch of Christianity.

Finally, I believe that another reason why the first-person experiential nar-rative data are important for the sociology of religion is that it will help illu-minate why Pentecostal communities are so keen on the so-called “spiritual warfare,” and why their discourses of demonization of pagan and neo-pagan spiritualities are so belligerent and uncompromising. As Rosalind Hackett admits in her essay, “Discourses of Demonization in Africa and Beyond” (2003), this is something that the third-person independent observer simply does not seem to be able to understand:

While mfm [Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries] describes itself as a Christian organization —a “full gospel ministry” —and indeed members are taught to invoke the name of Jesus as a powerful weapon, the attention given in writings, ritual acts and symbolic communication to satanic forces is over-whelming. When I asked my companion, a woman lawyer who is an avid member of mfm, whether this call for constant vigilance against demonic forces was not an admission of the insufficiency of Christian salvation, she replied that as a non-Nigerian I could not understand the negative powers that beset Nigerians in particular. Obviously many others agree with her as around 100,000 people—claimed by mfm to make it the largest Christian congregation in Africa—flock to the Akoka-Yaba site each Sunday morn-ing…. (Hackett 2003, 66)

Naturally, without having ever personally witnessed dramatic hair-raising incidents of exorcism in the Christian churches worldwide, or blood-freez-


ing episodes of spirit-possession in the Bon Tibetan monasteries, or the destructive effects of witchcraft by a local witch-doctor in Africa, it is nearly impossible for a secular sociologist of religion to understand why Christian Pentecostals oftentimes act as sensationalist “ghost-hunters,” especially in the non-Western parts of the world, where indigenous occult practices are still vibrant today. Perhaps, the Pentecostals’ first-person insider accounts of exorcism and the “reality” of “spiritual warfare” as they see it will throw some light on these issues. But how is it possible to introduce those narra-tive accounts as a valuable notion into the academic study of religion?

Returning Revelatory Spirituality into the Social Scientific Study of Pentecostalism: The Challenge

“For much of the twentieth century, the social scientific study of religion was essentially a Godless field,” notes Rodney Stark in his Return-ing God to the Social Scientific Study of Religion (2010), “not only because so many practitioners were non-believers, but because little or no attention was paid to God when analyzing religious phenomena. In keeping with Emile Durkheim’s solemn assurances, God was banished from definitions of religion and was ignored in both research and theorizing.” The same can be argued about the social scientific study of Pentecostalism: little or no atten-tion has been paid to the pneumatological experiences of the “Holy Spirit” in contemporary academia. It may not be an exaggeration to say that no aca-demically recognized framework, no scientifically validated methodology for the study of revelatory spirituality exists today. The challenge remains for the sociology of religion to be able to discuss Pentecostal spirituality in its own terms and to bridge the gap between inherently religious discourses on spirituality and predominantly humanistic approaches to the study of religion. Revelatory spirituality—which is of crucial importance for the understanding of Pentecostalism— still remains within the parameters of materialist dominated scientific paradigm where spiritualistic phenomena beyond the natural world that are impossible to measure using the scientific method have been reduced to the mere products of human imagination or phantoms in the brain. Still today the social science of religion approaches revelatory spirituality as a by-product of the evolution of human conscious-ness, as a social psychological response to the environment, or as a natural


outcome of a basic human need to romanticize reality, rooted in such funda-mental human instincts as fear, hope, and search for recognition. Prophetic revelations, visions, and other revelatory phenomena are interpreted as a utopianist idealization of existence, escapism from reality, and other psy-chopathological deviations, or mere mental diseases.

For years I have been struggling with the problem of how the first-person subjective accounts of spiritual experiences can be re-introduced into the academic discourse and whether they can serve as legitimate counterparts in the dialogue with social science. It appears that many social sciences and even natural sciences today struggle with this question. We know that psychology and medical sciences have to deal with personal narratives all the time: “Narrative data are increasingly being recognized as essential for clinical understanding” (Gordon 1999); “Medical narrative is changing: a movement is from the physician’s narrative to patient’s narrative” (Kalitz-kus and Matthiessen 2009) Even in neuroscience we now hear the voices that urge us to reconsider the significance of the first-person experience in hard sciences:

The fullness of human experience cannot be understood if constrained to a third person researcher perspective. Traditionally, scientific interpretations take a third person point of view: we are trying to get an idea from outside what they—that person in the scanner or that monkey in the chair—are doing. However, it is evident that as soon as we take a non-third person per-spective, or when we actually take a second person perspective, this is when we actually acknowledge that the experimental subject has deeper dimensions to them [my emphasis], whether it is a monkey or a human. It is when we are confronted by the possible reality of the Other that we go deeper than our surface models approach and begin to do serious interdisciplinary work.47

Apparently, there is a traceable tendency in psychology, medical sciences, and even in neurosciences to de-marginalize the significance of the first-per-son subjective human experience. In my view, the social science of religion studying shamanism and Pentecostalism could significantly benefit from allowing the target research subjects “speak for themselves.” “The sociology of religion ought to come to an end,” argues John Milbank, “secular reason

47. Comment by Michael Spezio in “15th Nanzan Institute Symposium, Brain Science and Religion: Some Asian Perspectives,” Bulletin of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture 34 (2010), Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, p. 51.


claims that there is a ‘social’ vantage point from which it can locate and sur-vey various ‘religious’ phenomena. But it has turned out that assumptions about the nature of religion themselves help to define the perspective of this social vantage” (Milbank 2002, 139–40). “Spirit matters,” echoes a promi-nent Jewish American intellectual Michael Lerner, “It is going to be the most important reality of the next period of the human history” (2000, xi).

This, however, will immediately raise a number of serious concerns: How can we elaborate a framework for the social scientific study of religion with-out soliciting unnecessary esoteric connotations? What if the discussions on the paranormal revelatory experience would challenge our empirical frame-works and humanistic interpretative models? Most importantly, how can the social science of religion include first-person experiential accounts of spiritual experiences and not fall into the trap of religious apologetics?

It seems to me that the answer to these questions lies on the surface: the first-person narratives are purely subjective and anecdotal and should be treated as such. Personal testimonies should never be used as tools to assess the validity of religious beliefs and doctrines, but only as means for ana-lyzing the social dynamics within the religious communities. Perhaps the social science of religion can follow in the steps of psychology and medical sciences, which analyze patients’ personal narrative data in order to discover the patterns, “paradigm cases,” and “plots” in research subjects’ subjective accounts and to analyze how these common patterns constitute the shared reality48 for human beings. As D. R. Gordon suggests:

Individual cases can be generalized along some of the following lines: 1) “par-adigm cases”: cases emblematic of a particular type of story or outcome; 2) “lived narratives”: the movement of the individual through and into particu-lar lived stories, based on the well-documented notion that our experience is… shaped not only by stories we tell and hear but by stories we actually live in and live for; 3) “plot lines”: cases are compared to the types of outstanding “plots” that dominate.” (Gordon 1999, 72)

Human experience “is not about reality, it is about shared reality,” argues Richard Bandler (1985, 18) in his Using Your Brain for a Change. Pente-costal communities obviously have constructed this shared reality through

48. Shared reality is a concept introduced by Richard Bandler in his Using Your Brain for a Change, 1985, p. 18 (see below).


their experiential “lived narratives” and “paradigm cases.” The above-men-tioned “prophetic subculture” is what sustains the “reality” of the “spiritual world” for Pentecostal believers. The traditional shaman and neo-shaman communities similarly create their own shared realities, and—ironically enough—the shared realities of religious communities may turn out to be no less “real” and humanly-valid than those of their academic counter-parts. In the words of Richard Bandler:

Most people’s experience is not about reality, it’s about shared reality. There are people who come to my door and give me religious comic books, and tell me the world is going to end in two weeks. They talk to angels, and they talk to God, but they’re not considered crazy. But if a single person is caught talking to an angel, he is called crazy, taken to a mental hospital and stuffed full of drugs.… Physicists also have a shared reality. Other than that, there really isn’t a lot of difference between being a physicist and being a schizo-phrenic. Physicists also talk about things you can’t see. How many of you have seen an atom, let alone a sub-atomic particle? There is a difference: physicists are usually a little more tentative about their hallucinations, which they call “models” or “theories.” When one of their hallucinations is chal-lenged by new data, physicists are a tiny bit more willing to give up their old ideas. Most of you learned a model of the atom that said there is a nucleus made up of protons and neutrons, with electrons flying around the outside like little planets. Niels Bohr got the Nobel Prize for that description back in the 1920’s.… Fairly recently, physicists decided that Bohr’s description of the atom is wrong. I wondered if they were going to take back his Nobel prize, but then I found out Bohr is dead, and he already spent the money.… Phys-ics is usually presented as a very “objective” science, but I notice that physics changes and the world stays the same, so there must be something subjective about physics. Einstein… reduced physics to what psychologists call “guided fantasy,” but which Einstein referred to as a “thought experiment.” He visual-ized what it would be like to ride on the end of a beam of light. And people say that he was academic and objective! (Bandler 1985, 18–19)

Self and Other, subject and object, subjective and objective.… As Nietzsche once shrewdly warned us, categorical dualisms are potentially reversible, essentially unsteady and easily alterable. And if the vastness and the mag-nitude of the transcendental human experience—from shamanism through Pentecostalism—will challenge our self-righteous academic attitudes and deconstruct the myth of academic “objectivity,” well, fair enough, so be it!


Towards the Future Social Science of Religion

“Concepts create idols, only wonder grasps anything,” Saint Greg-ory of Nyssa tells us in his 4th century treatise, The Life of Moses. The writ-ers of the Age of Faith49 did not think of the sacred and the scientific as opposing discourses, rather the creation of new myths was associated with the work of Creation, linking the work of God with that of the composer of an allegory. The combination of an allegory with science and science with philosophy was intrinsic to the twelfth and the thirteenth century nascent academia that flourished in the Latin West.50 In modernity, an era of redemptive messianism of science, scientific discourse was defined in defi-ance to mythical modes of thinking, delusions, and superstitions. A dualis-tic dissimilation of “myth” vs. “knowledge” was further reinforced through polarization of rhetorical speculation and empirical inquiry as opposite methods of cognition with the dissociation of the humanities and natural sciences in the Renaissance. Allegorical writing has gradually been margin-alized into the sphere of aesthetics, whereas academic writing has gradually been subjected to conventional principles of structural organization that we presently inherit. No roundabouts or insinuations as to sacred revelations within the academic discourse are welcomed any longer.

A postmodernist trend to break with rigorous academic writing conven-tions originally started with Friedrich Nietzsche, who in his own writings subverted conventional modernist segmentation into science and aesthet-ics explicitly through the content of his essays and implicitly by means of artistic articulation of philosophical ideas. Nietzschean anti-objectivism was further developed by a number of postmodernist critics in the sec-ond half of the twentieth century. It is Jurgen Habermas who unabashedly puts “the usual distinctions between genres in question” (1996, 206–10) It is Michel Foucault who constantly refers to his own philosophical writ-ings as “fiction,” in order to prevent them from turning into hegemonic

49. The Age of Faith is a term coined by Carl Becker in The Heavenly City of the Eigh-teenth-century Philosophers (1966). It is used in reference to the Middle Ages in contrast to “the Age of Reason” used in reference to the era of modern science.

50. Perhaps the most prominent are Bernard Silvestris of Chartes’s Cosmographia (1147–1148), Alan of Lille’s De Planctu Naturae (1160), and Anticlaudianus (1150–1160), among others.


“regimes of truth” (2000, 131–33) It is Richard Rorty (2002) who speaks, albeit without much enthusiasm, about “the rising of the literary culture” on the post-Enlightenment ruins of the myth of scientific objectivism. “A variety of disciplines cite sufficient evidence to suggest that a near consen-sus has emerged on the human need for more than conceptual analysis for understanding human existence,” argues David Tracy; by means of “story” or “parable,” Tracy concludes, “the attitude of the speaker can be more deeply internalized” (1996, 207). “Since the nineteenth century, the methods of the natural sciences have served as a model for rationalization of other disciplines. But during the past two decades that model has proved inad-equate for an understanding of society and culture,” insists Martine Wal-lace (1986, 1). A conventional distinction between myth and knowledge, as we presently realize, has long been but a grand myth per se constructed during the Age of Reason.

My rebellious “itch” to “reverse all reversibilities,” blend all genres, and mess with academic conventions was meant to allegorically demonstrate that in the two-dimensional human-centered academic universe all aca-demic dualisms—as much as religious—are topsy-turvy and can always be constructively overturned alongside a shift of a political climate. Social sci-ences have long been trapped in the academic straightjacket of dialectical materialism and we keep forgetting that scientific discourses, in essence, are man-made, artificial, and temporally-spacially conditioned. Concepts cre-ate idols, scientific discourses crate idols. My hope is that the social science of religion, along with other disciplines, will employ a Nietzschean method-ological irony, or rather a methodological self-irony, and always be reminded to hold a humble intellectual attitude in the face of the grandness of human experience. Only wonder grasps anything, only wonder.

The present essay perhaps does not bring much clarity to the social scien-tific study of shamanism and Pentecostalism. If anything it may create more confusion on the issue. It is (by the author’s own admission) biased, delim-ited, presumptuous, and, probably, full of sweeping generalizations and mis-interpretations, which it so passionately strives to deconstruct. However, I hope that it serves its initial purpose—to expose multiple controversies penetrating throughout academic and religious discourses on the issues of transcendental spirituality.

Again, “Pentecostal apologetics”—which I so painstakingly strive to elab-


orate here—are not meant to solicit Christian apologetics into the academic discourse but simply to argue that Pentecostalism and shamanism can-not be so easily reduced to a common denominator. Christian apologetics aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith and, in my view, it should remain where it belongs: within the context of Christian theology. Moreover, the fewer scientific rational “proofs” of the validity of the Chris-tian doctrine there are, the better it may be for the overall “spiritual health” of its adherents. Christianity is a “narrow path,” after all, and the Richard Dawkinses are just as important for the “kingdom of God” as the C.S. Lew-ises. They make the way harder.

As a final challenge, one way to make this way even harder, I suggest, is to keep questioning Pentecostal “discourses of demonization” of non-Christian religions and spiritualities. Is it “fair” for Pentecostalism in East Asia and beyond to demonize all non-Christian revelatory phenomena as “demon-inspired,” including paranormal revelatory experiences manifest within the context of Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism and other religions? Will main-stream Pentecostalism be able to provide us with serious justification for the exclusion of indigenous East Asian spirituality from its parameters? Or will it stretch the Pentecostal doctrine of the “Holy Spirit” towards embracing pneumatological universalism? What is the future face of the Pentecostal movement in East Asia and other non-Western parts of the world? These are among the most fundamental questions that need to be primarily resolved as we embark on a systematic panoramic research of Pentecostalism as a global phenomenon.

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